


Illegally Yours

by jeynestheon



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Hockey, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Boss/Employee Relationship, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Light Angst, Marriage of Convenience, The Proposal AU, but also the wall of winnipeg and me au, but formerly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:28:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 36,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28840158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeynestheon/pseuds/jeynestheon
Summary: When his mouth leaves hers, her lips feel cold. And then it all comes rushing back to her—her common sense, everything that had happened the day before, and the sole, unchangeable fact that up until two days ago, this man had been her boss. And there’s also the fact that before that, he had been her worst enemy.She swears, she swears to god that he looks at her mouth before he looks into her eyes again, and the nod he gives her is minute, barely there, before he turns back to the man in the corner, who had gotten a free show. But Sansa can’t find it in herself to care. Jon’s hand is on her back again.“Mr. Thorne, I’d like you to meet my fiancée, Sansa Stark.”
Relationships: Jeyne Poole/Robb Stark, Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 196
Kudos: 505





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was supposed to post this on Valentine’s Day but I couldn’t wait. I know I have like several WIPs and I promise all of them will be finished! Just be patient with me. 
> 
> Based off the proposal (2009) and the wall of winnipeg and me by mariana zapata. If you don’t line either of these things you probably shouldn’t read. Anyway, enjoy! Comments and kudos are very much appreciated and encouraged.

The door to his room is closed. 

It’s almost eight am, and the door to his room is closed. There’s no rustling. No footsteps. No light streaming out from the cracks of space between the smooth white wood and the frame. He’s in there. He has to be, because his car is still in the driveway, and the gym downstairs—where he’s _supposed_ to be—is completely empty. 

“Oh boy.” Sansa mutters under her breath, wiping a perspiring palm against her denim clad thigh. Her other hand is holding a questionably large bowl of homemade oatmeal that threatens to drop to the ground. She starts clutching it tightly, like her life depends on it.

It kinda does. 

At her feet, Ghost noses the door tentatively. Almost absurdly large, even for a Kuvasz-Husky mix (allegedly _)_ he’s at eye level with the door knob, as if he’s trying to peer through the keyhole. Whatever he sees must not satisfy him, because he sighs. _Actually_ sighs. As if he’s just as exasperated with his father at the moment as she has been in the past. 

“Maybe you should go first.” Sansa suggests. “He likes you more than me.”

When she first started working here, after cleaning rooms, she used to close the doors afterwards only to find them wide open later on. There was a brief time where she considered that the house was actually haunted. It wasn’t until three months into the job that she saw Ghost opening the door to one of the guest rooms himself with his paws. So she knows damn well what he’s capable of. She knows that if he wanted to, he could take one for the team, open the door and stroll in right now. Instead, he just sits back on his haunches and watches her, as if to say, _I’m not that stupid._

“Don’t look at me like that.” Sansa says defensively. 

Ghost continues to look at her, just like that. 

“Chicken.” She sticks her tongue out at him, but it doesn’t make her feel any better. Ghost must know this, because he licks the back of her leg in consolation. Strangely enough, that’s what gives her the courage to rap her knuckles against the door.

“Knock, knock.” She calls out. “Anyone in there?”

No answer. 

She hadn’t really been expecting one.

Sansa bites back a sigh of irritation. “I’m coming in, now.” 

Despite knowing that he wouldn’t, she still gives him about 15 seconds to answer before she pushes the door open. The room is completely dark thanks to the black out curtains, and she nearly stumbles over a shoe with the oatmeal in hand. Holding back from cursing, she slides her work phone from out her back pocket and turns on the flashlight. Not even seconds later, she hears a groan.

He’s alive, at least. 

“Rise and shine.” Sansa says cheerfully in a way that sickens her as much as she knows it sickens him. She pushes the curtains open.

It’s close to seven AM. The sky outside is pallid and blank, like the inside of a cereal bowl. The light emanating from it is cold and harsh and unspeakably unflattering, but it hits him just right, just like everything does. He’s in bed, on his stomach, covers rucked up at his waist. A big, fluffy white pillow covers his head, bracketed by his arms. He’s holding it so tightly that his biceps are flexing, and the muscles underneath the skin of his back ripple too, as if they’re winking at her. _Smugly._

She swallows.   
  


“Morning.” She chirps, clearing her throat. “We’re running a little behind, so breakfast is gonna have to be fast. I noticed you drank your morning smoothie last night after you worked out, which is fine. But if you told me, I could have made you three and stuck them in the fridge for later.”

A loud exhale causes his body to rise and fall into the California King. 

“Well—I’ll keep that in mind for next time.” She says breezily. “I made you some oatmeal instead. But like I said, you’re gonna have to be quick about it. We have to be at the studio at nine.”

He goes perfectly still, then, like he’s not breathing at all.

Sansa takes a deep breath herself, setting the oatmeal on the nightstand. She resists the temptation to pinch the bridge of her nose—her Martha Stewart is wearing _real_ thin. “Jon.” She begins, a little firmer—

“Cancel it.” His voice comes out raspy with sleep, honey soaked gravel, muffled through the pillow. 

Briefly, very briefly, she considered wrapping her hands around his stupid, irritatingly attractive neck. 

“I know you’re tired,” Sansa balls her hands into fists. “But—”

He pulls the pillow off of his head and shoves it underneath his body in one swift gesture that seems impossibly graceful this early in the morning. Eyelids sticky with sleep, he stares at her blankly with those dark eyes of his, the ones that never failed to make people squirm under their scrutiny. 

Sansa doesn’t squirm for anybody. It’s unladylike. 

“Call Sam.” He says. “Tell him it’s my back, or something. I don’t care. Just make him cancel it.”

She isn’t a yeller. Save for her father, she comes from a family of yellers. She is well versed in the art of yelling, and she prides herself for being able to get her point across to others in a civilized, respectful fashion. But that’s with normal people. In the past two years she’s spent working for him, Jon Snow has proved to be exceptional. Not only in hockey—

But in the fact that he gets on her goddamn _nerves._

“You cannot cancel on GQ.” Sansa says, very slowly. If she gets ahead of herself, she knows she’s gonna start screaming, and if she starts screaming, she’s going to bite his beefy head off. “I told you about this three weeks in advance _purposefully_. I put it on every calendar. I’ve brought it up every single morning for the past five days. We went to the fitting. Do you know why I did that?”

He flicks an irritable gaze over towards her. “Because I pay you to?”

She feels her eye twitch. 

“Because I know how you are, _sir._ ” She smiles so hard her cheeks hurt. “And that is exactly why I reorganized everything so that this would be the only thing you have to do for the day. This one thing. You have no reason to cancel this shoot.”

“I’m tired.” He says. “There’s my reason.”

And maybe, just maybe, she softens. Just a little bit.

Six months ago, in the beginning of the season, Jon was injured badly on the ice—a fractured vertebrae and a ruptured Achilles tendon. Separate, the injuries were serious, but together, they were even worse, and that wasn’t even factoring in his age. At 36, he was an outlier in an industry that relied so heavily on fresh blood. But he was as good as he was at 36 as he was when he was 17. 

She would know. 

That was before he got injured. He’s only just getting back on the ice recently after months of physical therapy, and whether he’s going to be able to be ready in time for training camp is still up for debate between him and his doctor, who has suggested that Jon should consider retirement more than once. Sansa secretly agrees. He’s been playing for close to 20 years now, and has two Stanley Cup rings to show for it. He’s had a great career, and there’s no shame in bowing out. But she’d never tell him that, not only because he’d probably fire her, but because for so long, hockey had been his life. It was his tether. She did not know who he would be without it, and she was scared he wouldn’t either.

Jon sighs long. “Why are you still here?”

Just like that, her sympathy vanishes. 

“You have ten minutes to eat your oatmeal. Then you’re getting in the shower. ” Sansa informs him coolly. “Do you want me to lay out your clothes?”

For awhile, he just glares up at the ceiling, until Ghost leaps onto the bed. The mattress sinks underneath his entire weight as he makes his way towards his father. As irritated as Jon is, it never applies to Ghost. He scratches him behind the ears, and Ghost licks his scruffy cheek. She has a feeling that’s supposed to be some consolation, too.

“No.” He mutters finally.

“In half an hour, I’m gonna be downstairs at the door. So are you. Understand?”

She’s not really asking him if he understands because she’s already at the door and she knows she’s got her way. He seems to notice this because his eyes narrow. 

“I could fire you.” He points out.

“You could.” Sansa agrees. “But you won’t.”

One of the things she likes about him—not that there are many outside of his physical attributes—is his sense of loyalty. They’d been together for an entire year and some change before his injury, but that was how she proved herself to him. She’d been by his side every step of the way: surgeries, physical therapy appointments, mood swings, and firing of doctors. She was there. Yeah, because he was paying her, but also because she knew what it was like to be alone. She wouldn’t have wished it on her worst enemy. 

And while he had certainly had been an enemy for the better part of her childhood—information only a select few know—she’s almost positive he isn’t now.

“How much sugar did you put in this goddamn oatmeal?”

….Until he said things like that. 

“Enough to poison you, hopefully.” She says under her breath, as she leaves the room.

“Did you say something?”

“Eight minutes and counting!” She volleys back, jogging back down the spiral staircase. “Chop, chop!”

* * *

Once upon a time, there was a girl from Winterfell who hated hockey. 

It started out as a dormant, malignant kind of resentment. She’d always been a team player—no pun intended. When she had to spend her days after school doing homework on the bleachers because Robb was practicing, she never complained. When her dad missed her tournaments because Robb had a game, she never complained. When she couldn’t sleep in the middle of the night because her father and her brothers were screeching over a match playing out on the screen, she never complained. When her uncle Benjen had the decency to pretend to be interested in her skating and called it ice dancing, she never complained. Had she wanted to scream? Absolutely. Had she wanted to cry? No doubt. Had she wished upon a shooting star on at least three separate occasions that hockey didn’t exist? If anyone asks, for legal purposes, no. 

But she never really _hated_ hockey until Jon Snow came along. 

She heard his name around her household more than her own, sometimes. He was drafted to Boston first, before he signed a three year contract deal with the Alaska Direwolves. With him, they made it to the playoffs for the first time since the early 90s. They called him the savior of the team, their last great hope. When Jon signed on for another five years, everyone was ecstatic.

That season, he sustained a concussion in a game against the Bruins, and wasn’t seen for weeks. It was actually rather dramatic thinking back on it, all the rumors that were spreading around because poor Jon Snow bumped his head. _He was out for the season. No, he was never gonna play again. No—he had amnesia and forgot to play._ It wasn’t long before they found out that none of these rumors were true, when the Prodigal Prince of the franchise returned to play against the islanders. It was completely unexpected. People cheered. People cried. Her father and her brother, who actually went to the game, were no exception.

Sansa remembers that day, and not because of the game. She remembers it because she was basically alone in the house, after Bran broke his arm in the middle of the night when Arya pushed him out of the treehouse and Rickon was passed out upstairs on enough Nyquil to knock him out for a solid two hours because that was the only way their mother trusted anyone to watch them and she was in the kitchen, lighting the candles to her own birthday cake. No one else remembered. Not even her mother. And in her mind, it was all Jon Snow’s fault. 

So when she blew out the big number sixteen and wished for him to get hit by a big monster truck and break both of his legs, she meant it.

Unfortunately.

Everyone has their flaws.

* * *

“Where are you going?”

Sansa just barely swallows down her sigh. 

Jon got maybe two steps outside the car before he realized she wasn’t following him, and came right back. His brow is slanted in irritation, as it usually is around her, and his phone is clutched in a death grip in one of his large hands, like he plans to use it as a weapon against anyone who tries to engage him in social conversation. 

“To pick up your dry cleaning.” She says, not unpleasantly. “I was gonna go do that, then—”

“Do it later.” He interrupts her, already turning his back on her.

If Sansa cursed, like _ever_ —she’d curse at that moment. 

But she doesn’t. And, as she reminds herself very frequently, he pays her. Quite a fair amount. So she parks his car, slings her purse over her shoulder, and quickly jogs to come meet him at the front of the house the shoot was taking place. She’s barely reached the curb before he starts walking again. It isn’t hard to catch up to him, they’re the same height—though her legs are longer.

“I still have to get the house ready for Barstool.” Sansa reminds him. 

“You’ll have time.” He says dismissively.

Easy for him to say. He had never cleaned his own house from top to bottom. In fact, she’s not sure when the last time was that he cleaned _anything_ himself. Granted, before she left Winterfell, she had never even touched a broom, so she isn’t really in a position to be judging. 

Behind his back, she rolls her eyes. “Yes, sir.” 

“You said it yourself. this is the only thing we have on schedule. You’ll have the rest of the day. Relax.”

Relax. _Relax._ The most uptight person she had ever met was telling _her_ to relax. She looks up at the sky briefly, before repeating, “Yes, sir.”

“And stop rolling your eyes at me.”

He’s literally in front of her, but somehow, he can always tell. The first time he caught her had been three months into her job, and she thought he was gonna fire her, but all he did was raise his brows at her, and then walk away. It took her awhile to realize that for someone with so many rules, Jon wasn’t averse to a little insolence. At least from her. As time passed, she felt less and less bad for doing it, because honestly—he deserved it sometimes. 

Briefly, Sansa thinks about sticking her tongue out at him, but with her luck, he’d probably know she was doing that too, so instead, she just smiles. “Yes sir.” 

He just grunts. 

They make it with five minutes to spare, not late officially, but everyone is waiting for them and she can’t help but feel embarrassment. Jon, however, is immune to embarrassment, and when she starts to apologize profusely, doesn’t bother joining in. 

She doesn’t even understand why she’s here, really. She asks Jon twice if there’s something she can get him but he tells her no. So in reality, she’s just sitting there, watching them prep and primp him for his photoshoot. Not that she doesn’t mind the break, but she could be doing other things.

Like picking up the damn dry cleaning.

But when she brings it up to him, his full mouth turns down at the corners, and he shakes his head. She doesn’t ask why, but she does stand there and glare at him for a while passive aggressively so that it’s implied. At last, he sighs.

“If you’re gone, then they’ll think they can talk to me.” He says, as if it should be obvious.

Sansa blinks, very slowly.

“It wouldn’t kill you to be a little courteous.” She says. “They’re trying to make conversation with you.”

“You’re better at it than me.” He lifts one of those broad shoulders into a shrug. “You talk to them. That’s why you’re here.”

How he’d even manage to get through the interview without her—she’d been doing his grocery shopping at the time and the one thing he wasn’t going to stop her from doing was getting him food—she doesn’t know. 

The conversation he had feared so much came from the makeup artist, a lean looking man with hazel eyes and an earring who asked about his skin care routine and the hairdresser, a curvy dark haired girl who gushed on and on about his curls. Sansa answers all these questions, and her answers please Jon enough that he looks less disgruntled by the time they’re done. 

“Is he mute?” The make up artist asks her, when the stylist comes to take over. “I thought that was just a rumor.”

No. Just absurdly socially awkward. She thinks about telling them this, but figures a lie would be better instead. “He lost his voice the other day.” She lies. “Doctor told him to take it easy.”

The makeup artist nods and the hairdresser makes a sound of understanding. Sansa feels awful for lying to them. 

“He looks great.” She tries for a compliment. “Thanks for taking it easy with the makeup. He gets self conscious about that sort of thing.”

“He didn’t need that much, anyway.” says the makeup artist, then lets out a low whistle. “That face.”

“That body.” sighs the hairdresser.

Over her shoulder, Jon has stripped down to his boxers and is pulling a blazer over his bare chest. He has absolutely no problem getting naked in front of people, but making polite conversation is off limits. Sansa rolls her eyes. As if he can sense it, his eyes find hers across the room, squinting in suspicion. Sansa smiles innocently, sweet as sugar.

Jon hates sugar. 

“I want water.” He demands, voice a little loud so that it carries.

“I’ll get it.” The makeup artist volunteers eagerly, and he’s off before she can stop him.

At the prospect of interaction with someone besides her, Jon looks like he’s swallowed a lemon. His eyes widen fractionally at her, but she just shrugs maybe a little too helplessly.

Yeah. She’s gonna enjoy this. 

“Do you think I can have an autograph?” The hairdresser asks excitedly. “My brother—he’s a huge fan.”

He’s a jerk sometimes, sure, but he isn’t a monster. He might clam up around a picture, but he wasn’t stingy around autographs. So Sansa nods, offering her a smile. “I’ll see what I can do.”

The hairdresser squeaks something intelligible out, probably a thanks, before running off to find something for him to sign. The makeup artist comes striding back in, a bottle of sparkling water underneath the arm. He hands it to Jon, who accepts it silently. 

He hates sparkling water. 

Sansa swallows a giggle just in time for the makeup artist to come back to her side, slightly red faced but grinning from ear to ear. 

“He’s so intimidating.” He whispers. “How do you do it? Be around him everyday. Like he’s a normal person.”

The idea of Jon being anything but normal actually causes her to laugh, she just can’t help it. 

“He’s as regular as any of us are.” She tells him in a faux, conspiratorial whisper. “Believe me.”

* * *

_Normal_ and _regular_ are kind of overstatements, when she thinks about it. 

  
Jon Snow might actually be the most boring person on the planet. 

He doesn’t go out to eat. He hates sugar, and anything sweet. He spends his evenings obsessing over old plays and planning for future ones. He has a grand total of three friends: Jeor—his coach from high school, Sam—his manager, and Tormund—his old teammate when he played for the Direwolves. Is it possible that he has more friends? Yes. But these are the only three people in the world he cares enough to make her purchase christmas and birthday gifts for, so she doesn’t really think so. 

He doesn’t acknowledge his own birthday. The only picture he has in his whole house is of his dead mother in his office. He doesn’t enjoy food, he tolerates it, which means he could care less about spices. He has millions in his bank account, and most of the clothes in his closet are either black, gray, or white. He has zero tattoos. He’s from Ottawa and she’s heard him say ‘eh’ maybe three times. His idea of downtime is watching historical documentaries. God, even his _porn_ is boring; missionary, reverse cowgirl, sometimes a MILF if he’s feeling daring. Sansa doesn’t watch porn or consider herself an aficionado or anything, but she thought that someone who made women actually honest to god _cry_ during sex would at least be watching something interesting. He had to have learned it from somewhere. 

Speaking of sex, for someone others claimed had been such a playboy in the height of his career, he’s had two girlfriends in the time that she’s worked here. Daenerys was actually his fiancée, and they’d known each other for about six months before they made the decision to get married. She was a pretty french heiress who did a lot of philanthropy and didn’t like Sansa at all. Granted, Sansa never tried that hard with her. She thought that Jon was making a mistake rushing into things with somebody so fast after spending so long alone. And there was the fact that whenever she saw them together, Daenerys wasn’t very nice to him. But it wasn’t like she could share her opinion; at that point, Sansa had only been there a month longer than Daenerys had. So it was whatever. 

Everything about their relationship was dramatic. Daenerys liked to storm out of rooms and slam doors, and shout for long periods of time. Her temper was something fierce, and Jon was always soothing it, and not in a normal, “Hey, I love you and we should talk about this,” way. They’d just have sex. A lot of sex. During the day and during the night. In his room and unfortunately, in other rooms. Sansa would be in her office, and sure enough, that telltale wall banging and cat wailing would start up, and she’d know it was time to go run an errand. When she came back, all would be silent and well. No moaning or yelling. Until she found something that pissed her off again. 

Just like she had come into the kitchen one morning with a big rock on her finger, she had come in one day without it. Actually, she’d come in with it in her hand and _thrown_ it right at Sansa’s face. She just barely caught it.

“Good luck.” Tears streaked her cheeks, as she grabbed her keys. Then she paused unexpectedly, right before she left the kitchen. “But if even I deserve better then you sure as hell do.”

The door had just slammed just as Jon came down the stairs. He still could have probably stopped her if he booked it for the driveway, but he didn’t. He halted in the kitchen, just across from where she was standing in front of the island.

He didn’t say anything, just stared at her. She could hear Daenerys’ car start in the driveway, but he just stood there. It occurred to her thar he could be in shock. Like a deer before it got hit by a car. 

“I think she forgot to give this to you.” Sansa said quietly, sliding the ring over to him. 

That seemed to snap him out of his stupor. He quickly took the ring and pocketed it. His hand stayed there while his other was at his side, flexing.

“Did she say anything?” He wasn’t looking at her. “To you? Just now—I mean.”

Nothing that she understood. _You deserve better._ Jon wasn’t exactly a monster for a boss. And if she really felt that way, then she could have been just a little nicer to her when they had been dating. _Witch._ Sansa didn’t mention this to him, though. She was just coming up on a year of having this job, and it would be a shame to be fired now. 

“Nope.” She said. “Nothing at all.”

He exhaled through his nose, and it almost appeared to be a sigh of relief. Then his face went blank again. The hand in his pocket was moving, and she knew he was touching the ring. He didn’t necessarily seem heartbroken, but that didn’t stop Sansa from wanting to drag Daenerys back inside and give her a piece of her mind.

She knew what it was like to lose a fiancé. She knew what it was like to be treated like shit by someone you were supposed to spend the rest of your life with. There were many things she could have said to him, many platitudes she could have offered, but she didn’t say anything. Jon never did well with pity, she didn’t wanna picture how he reacted to empathy. 

So instead, she said, “Homemade pizza for dinner?” And he nodded. 

Val had come about three months later. She was the definition of tall, blonde, and gorgeous. Jon never called her his girlfriend, though, and it was rare that she made appearances in the daylight. But Sansa was usually long gone before then. She had met her about twice, and both times, she was really nice. 

One day, Val stayed for breakfast and even helped her with dishes after she insisted it wasn’t necessary. At the end, she had put a hand on her shoulder. 

“Life’s too short to just wait around for things to happen to you.” She said. “You’ve gotta make them happen. Don’t be a pussy.”

“I’m not waiting around for anything.” Sansa blushed at her choice of words. “Do I...do I seem like I’m waiting around for something?”

Val just gave her a sly yet pitying sort of smile. “You tell me.”

Before she could answer, Jon came in at that moment. He wasn’t one for affection, but he did touch the small of Val’s back very lightly before pulling away. 

“You want me to take you home?” He asked.

“Sure.” She said, and their conversation was left open ended. 

Sansa had waited for an opportunity to pick it back up, because she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Maybe she _was_ waiting for something. The moment she left Winterfell with Joffrey, she thought she was done waiting. She thought she was gonna travel the world with the boy she loved, get married, and make new friends and memories. Ever since she left Joffrey’s apartment in the middle of the night, it felt like her entire life was a rug that was being pulled from under her. From then on, she was desperate to catch up, working several nanny jobs, living in a shitty apartment with three different roommates. Things were finally different. Her life was stable now. If she played her cards right, she could save up to travel. She could have probably done it then. She wondered what she was waiting for.

“Where’s Val?” She asked Jon as she cooked dinner one night. It was the third day she hadn’t made an appearance. 

Jon was sitting on the couch, watching a documentary on medieval forgery. “I’m not seeing her anymore.”

Sansa froze. “Really?”

He just grunted.

He didn’t sound broken up, or even a little bummed out. He sounded like he always did, painfully bored. But she knew that he had a mask better than most. 

“I thought you really liked her.” She paused. “I really liked her.”

“I’ll give you her number. Then you can start sleeping with her.”

At the time, she had a really large knife in her hand. She thought about telling him that he should watch what he said around people who had sharp objects in their hands. She didn’t. Instead she scowled, face red, and didn’t speak to him for the rest of the night. And he never gave her Val’s number. That was when she knew that Jon was more than his cold disposition. He had a cold heart, too. At least where women were concerned. 

But that’s more common than not in men like him, so it’s just another thing that makes him boring. 

* * *

All takes from the GQ shoot are emailed to her the next day, and Sansa goes through them to confirm which ones are okay to go in the spread because Jon doesn’t care enough to. She’s sitting on the couch in her office with her legs curled up underneath her. Her feet and hands ache from cleaning the house top to bottom, but she’s still able to find it in her to twitch her fingers over the mousepad and scroll. 

It’s the July issue, so most of the pictures are of him shirtless. Standing in a pool, water dripping down his abdomen. Laying down in a pool chair with his shirt open. Shoveling chinese food in mouth—again, shirtless. Sitting on the hood of a vintage car, hands folded. In that one, he’s clothed, but his arms are showing and that’s honestly just as much of a threat. In some photos, they obviously tried to soften him, with pastel colored colors and the camera’s focus being on his pouty mouth, but then _bam!—_ one of his thick arms would come up to rest behind his head, or boom!—he’d be running a hand through his hair, showing just how concerning the ratio of the breadth of his hand compared to the width of his face was, or _double freaking whammy_!—he’d be stretching up to the sky and that thin, wiry trail of hair beneath his navel would go lower and lower—

If Sansa told her sixteen year old self that in less than a decade’s time that she’d have a job as Jon Snow’s personal assistant, and that this was just one of many duties she was responsible for, her sixteen year old self would probably strongly consider suicide. 

Her phone rings, startling her out of her carefully _professional_ and _objective_ examination of her boss’s happy trail, and she slams her computer shut immediately. Sansa slaps her hands on her thighs, feeling for her work phone. Deadly still. The culprit is her personal phone on the other arm of the couch, which she has to lean over and crawl to grab. Intending to decline it, she checks the caller ID before sighing, as fondly as she does exasperatedly. 

“We’re supposed to be having this conversation in four hours.” says Sansa, pulling her computer back into her lap. “When I’m off of work.”

“Do you even hear yourself?” complains Jeyne. “You have to schedule phone calls with your own best friend. You don’t find that dystopian?”

Despite herself, she laughs. “Common courtesy is dystopian to you?”

“I have to go kumbaya with my sisters in four hours. Where’s your common courtesy? Or sympathy? I might not come back.” she complains. “Anyway, I shouldn’t have to wait. I’m the bride. And you're the maid of honor. Which means you just have to do what I want.”

Next week, Sansa would stand by her best friend’s side and watch her get married…to her older brother. She still hasn’t really gotten over the shock of it. When she left Winterfell, Jeyne carried a torch fueled by hatred for Robb—which she swore had nothing to do with the fact that she had a crush on him for years only for him to turn around and go date some other girl with the same exact name. Apparently, Robb started to see the error of his ways when they both ended up at White Harbor University together. Sansa had been mad when she first found out because Robb was a notorious serial monogamist, but he swore what he had for Jeyne was real. Sansa hadn’t believed him until he proposed on New year’s. It still feels like a joke, honestly. Not in a bad way, but just like one day she woke up to find the world upside down. 

“But because I love you and I don’t want your asshole boss to eat you for dinner, I’ll make this quick.” Jeyne continues. “I need to know what time you’re getting in on Saturday. The seamstress is coming by the house and you’re the only one who hasn’t been fitted for your dress. I know we’re basically the same size and everything, but I can’t leave anything up to ch—”

“Saturday?” she interrupts, heart already doing a free fall. “This Saturday?”

“What do you mean this Saturday?” 

Sansa squeezes her eyes shut guiltily.

“We literally had this conversation just last weekend. I even wrote details down so you couldn’t bullshit me.” says Jeyne, voice oscillating between accusing and frantic. “I had on a face mask. You asked me if your new skirt made you look bloated. I told you I thought your brother had a breeding kin—”

“I know! I know! I remember!” Sansa says, maybe a little too loudly, as if that’ll chase away that part of the conversation away from her thoughts. She rubs her forehead. “I thought you meant next Saturday.”

“Next Saturday is the _wedding!”_

“I know...I totally spaced. I should have thought about it more. Jeyne, I’m really—”

“Don’t.” she says, voice deadly soft. “Don’t you dare apologize. You don’t need to. Because you’re gonna be here. Even if I have to drag you here.”

Sansa sighs. “Jeyne—”

“I’ll start crying. I swear to god. Is that what it’s gonna take? I’ll do it.”

“You know I would if I could. It’s my boss. He needs me to work this weekend. 

And it’s true. She’d take a weekend at home with her family and friends over Long Island anyday. But Jon is filming a commercial this weekend and unfortunately, wants her to tag along. 

“So then let’s kill him!” Jeyne declares. “Problem solved.”

The only person in her life who knows she works for Jon was Gilly; the first friend she made by herself here, and the one who had gotten her the job through her husband. All her family knows is that she works long hours for a really demanding boss who is the reason she didn’t come home last Christmas. Jeyne knows a bit more than that, considering besides Gilly, she’s the only person that Sansa trusts enough to complain about him to. But while Gilly knows him as Jon, Jeyne just knows him as Big—a not so nice joke aimed at his stature compared to the other guys in the league. 

“Seriously, Sansa. You’ve worked for this guy for how long?”

The question is rhetorical, yet she begins to answer anyway. “Two—”

“Two years.” Jeyne cuts her off. “You do his _laundry_. You wash his sheets and leave mints on his pillow. You slept in a chair beside his hospital bed when he got hurt. You’ve knitted him Christmas sweaters! Has he ever once said thank you? No!”

“He does, sometimes.” Sansa says, a bit defensive. There goes that loyalty, kicking in. “He’s just—”

“He’s an asshole. That’s just it! Point blank period. If he doesn’t wanna treat you like an actual human being, the least he could do is let you come home for three measly days.”

On an average week, she works about 70 hours, and that’s not counting the time he occasionally asks her to stay and do something else for him. But whenever he does that, he pays her overtime. He’s paying her overtime to come along with him to film the commercial too. It isn’t losing the money she’s worried about, it’s telling him. He really can be intimidating when he wants to be. She doesn’t think he’ll yell at her about it, but she’s seen him hold a mean grudge before. And a small part of her doesn’t want him to be disappointed in her. 

This whole loyalty thing is really kicking her butt. 

“This isn’t even just about my wedding—which I have never once imagined without you, by the way—it’s about you standing up for yourself.”

Just yesterday morning she had stood up to him when he asked her to cancel the shoot, and things like that had been more and more common since he got out of the hospital. She had to push him sometimes, hard, and then soothe his bruises later. But Sansa understands now she could do with a little pushing herself.

She nods, ignoring the feeling of rising dread in her stomach. “You’re right.”

“Of course I am.” Jeyne replies without missing a beat. “You’re gonna go up to him and tell him, Big, I’m taking the next two weekends off. Fuck you.”

She frowns. “I don’t like that last part.”

“Sleep on it. Maybe it’ll sound better in the morning.” 

“I’m not saying that.”

“For now, let’s just focus on the overall message.” Jeyne bulldozes on. “Get Big to sign off on your field trip, come home, and then you can start working on more important things: my bachelorette party.”

They had to move the Bachelorette party to the night before the wedding and that was mostly her fault, because Sansa could only stay in Alaska for the weekend. But she plans to make it up to Jeyne by making it the best party ever. 

“Robb told me that you can’t have strippers.” She informs her. 

Jeyne snorts. “Tell Robb he can suck my—”

There’s a sound of loud protest from the other side of the phone and Sansa knows she doesn’t have to tell Robb anymore. She listens to them bicker, and starts laughing so hard her stomach hurts. 

* * *

Sansa planned on telling him this morning—honest to god. But it seemed the universe had other plans.

Jon woke up in a horrible mood. She knew it the moment he snapped at Ghost for tracking dirty paw prints inside, something that had never peeved him before as often as it happened. Then he left to go meet up with his trainer without another word. He didn’t even stay for breakfast, or wait for her to go through his schedule.

  
Something was definitely wrong.   
  


She gave it an hour, hoping a workout would diffuse some of his anger, before driving to his trainer’s gym with breakfast as a peace offering and her camera, figuring she could get in some good shots for instagram. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem any less annoyed. He took his breakfast without saying thank you and listened to his schedule silently. The only time he talked to her in that entire thirty minute period she had been there was to snap at her in front of an athlete she had been talking to. 

“I don’t pay you to flirt with rookies.” He said coldly. “If you’re done here, you can leave now.”

Her entire body felt as if it turned splotchy red. The guy next to her immediately backed away from her as if she has some contagious disease, and she waited until he was all the way across the room to approach Jon, who had just finished flipped an 1100 pound tire. 

“I wasn’t flirting.” Her entire face was extremely hot. “He was just asking me what kind of camera I had. He wanted to know where he could get one.”

Jon scoffed, but he didn’t say a word. She was standing right next to him and he wasn’t looking at her at all. In all their time together, even when he was in the hospital and at his lowest, he had never been mean to her like that. Especially in front of other people.

“Are you—” asking if he was okay just seemed stupid so Sansa swallowed the words and replaced them. “Is there something wrong?”

She didn’t know why she even bothered asking. He didn’t answer. For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t acknowledge her at all. But finally, after a full minute, his gaze moved over to meet hers. 

“You’re done here.” He said. “Head back to the house and make sure everything is ready for Barstool. Give Ghost a bath, too.”

And that was all he had to say to her. 

When that was clear, Sansa fought against the humiliated feeling wrestling in the pit of her stomach. She just nodded, not even finding it within herself to be snide. She was too blindsided. Too hurt. She hated herself for it.

Now, it’s almost one in the afternoon. Ghost is freshly bathed and Jon is meeting with his creepy agent somewhere in the house and she’s in her office hiding from him. It’s not even close to quitting time, and she’s watching the clock, waiting for it to run out. She is so done with today, and she’s especially done with him. 

Her personal phone chimes, and she knows it’s Jeyne asking her if she’s done it yet. Sansa has no idea how to tell her that she hasn’t, and why she hasn’t. _My boss hurt my feelings and now I don’t wanna look him in the face._ It just sounds stupid in her own head. Not to mention that telling her what he’d done would probably invigorate Jeyne’s wishes to kill him.

Sansa decides to take the swiffer out of the broom closet and do one last once over. She mopped earlier, but it can’t hurt to make sure. While she sweeps the first floor, Ghost makes sure to stay on the couch like a good boy. When she gets to the second floor she makes sure to sweep quickly and as thoroughly as possibly. She can hear the murmur of conversation from the closed door of Jon’s office and the last thing she wants is to run into him.

She finishes, but once she passes the door on her way back downstairs, she halts. She hadn’t mopped his office because it was carpeted, but she realizes she forgot to vacuum. She wonders if she knocked and asked for permission to do it really fast, would he snap at her again. 

“Have you seen Sansa?” 

That’s his voice inquiring about her. It makes her freeze, afraid to move and potentially make a noise. He’s always been territorial about his space, and unless he gives express permission, his office and his bedroom are off limits—the latter has an exception on laundry days. He wouldn’t be happy if he caught her lurking outside his door.

But if he was looking for anyway, it wouldn’t hurt to knock.

“Hate to disappoint you, but I don’t keep track of your pet.” Tyrion Lannister drawls. 

Tyrion Lannister. Joffrey’s stupid uncle and Jon’s agent. You couldn’t throw a rock anywhere in New York without hitting a Lannister. It was exactly why even though she had her degree, she had such a hard time finding an internship after she left Joffrey, and later work. The Lannisters have sunken their teeth into every industry. Sports is no exception. But Tyrion was something of a black sheep of the family, especially where his sister’s family was concerned. So if Cersei called him and asked him to turn Sansa away he’d probably tell her to kick rocks gladly. Not that he could anyway. It was Sam who was in charge of hiring Jon’s personnel, not Tyrion, and only he or Jon could fire her. 

Sansa has never really liked him. He’s old enough to be her father but that doesn’t stop him from hitting on her every time they cross paths, and it never fails to make her uncomfortable. The worst part of it all is that he knew that she was Joffrey’s ex. She has a strange suspicion that that turns him on even more. 

The last time they talked, not only had she rejected his offer for dinner for the hundredth time, she also told him that Jon wanted to cancel a signing. That hadn’t gone over well, and she ended up hanging up in his face because he started to take it out on her. Apparently, she pissed him off enough that he was holding a grudge.

Jon hums thoughtfully, “I haven’t seen her since I got home. But the house is clean, so she must be around here somewhere.” 

“You should have a conversation with her.”

Sansa blinks. Had she done something wrong?

Jon is apparently of the same mind. “She doesn’t disappear very often.”

“Yes, she’s usually always hovering somewhere. Like a gnat.” Tyrion mutters. “I’m not talking about that, though. I’m talking about optics. She’s quite young.”

“She’s capable.” 

“Yes, but her hanging all over you like a love sick puppy could make people think she’s capable of other things.” Tyrion pauses. “If you had someone older, this wouldn’t be a problem. I could find you someone.”

Her fist clenches around the swiffer handle.

When she first took the job, she was young, sure. She was 22, but now she’s almost 25 and there are plenty of people her age with jobs like hers. And she had proven herself. Not once in the past two years had she messed up. She did whatever he asked of her. She sacrificed her own free time. After he was injured, she spent every second by his side. And instead of loyal and reliable, she was being viewed as a girl with a stupid crush. She’d done nothing to deserve that.

Except, of course, piss Tyrion off. She had rejected him enough times, and he wanted her gone. 

“She doesn’t bother me.” Jon says.

_She doesn’t bother me._ Not “don’t talk about her like that” or “she’s really good at her job” but _she doesn’t bother me._ As if he’s some kind of saint for putting up with her. Sansa tries not to let it bother her. He’s never been one for glowing commendations.

“Then you should talk to her.” says Tyrion, sounding displeased. “The way she dresses doesn’t help your case. She could stand to cover up once in a while. Modesty wouldn’t hurt.”

She looks down at her clothes now, a white Direwolves shirt and denim shorts. It isn’t exactly workplace casual, but she had been cleaning. Whenever they go somewhere, she makes sure to dress accordingly. Also, it’s been two years, and she’s just now being reprimanded for being improper? He hadn’t minded her lack of “modesty _”_ when he was trying to hit on her.

“Send her out for a coffee or something during the tour so the interviewer won’t ask questions.” Tyrion suggests, then pauses. “She probably won’t notice, though. She’s hotter, anyway. Some meat on her bones. Your type, actually.”

Sansa flinches.

And after all that, after him calling her a nagging fly and a lovesick puppy and a wanton slut and now skinny and plain looking, the only thing Jon said was: “Not interested.”

After everything she had done for him. After everything they had been through, he only supplied two words, and not even one was to defend her. She would never let anyone talk about him like that. She didn’t even let Jeyne say anything too horrible about him, but he couldn’t put his agent in his place? He really is an asshole.

And she really is nothing to him. Sansa should have realized that in the gym when he treated her so rudely in front of everyone. She made his dinner and she talked for him when he got nervous and she stayed up with him at night when he got muscle cramps. When he first got out of the hospital, she didn’t go home for a month—she was so worried about him she slept in one of the guest rooms. And what had she gotten in return? What had he ever done besides pay her? Had he ever cared about her like she cared about him?

A lump is steadily dissolving in her throat, and before any tears can leave her eyes, she blinks several times. He isn’t worth it.   
  


None of this is.

Sansa heads back down to her office. She fishes for her key ring out of her tote bag and proceeds to pull every Jon related key off and set it down on the desk. She logs out of the macbook. She takes her work phone out of her pocket and places it on top of the desktop mousepad. She heads back upstairs to the room she had called hers for a little while where she still kept things, stuffing everything in the closet in her bag. Clothes. Extra chargers. Tampons. She zips it shut. 

Ghost is waiting for her in the doorway, as if he knows, and suddenly, it’s really hard not to cry. 

“I love you.” She kissed the top of his furry head. “I wish I could take you with me, but you probably wouldn’t come anyway.”

She knows Ghost loves her. She knows that they’ve bonded. But she also knows that that bond is nothing compared to the one he has for Jon. Sometimes, Sansa thinks they’re a part of one another. Maybe that’s the part of Jon that she was getting along with this entire time. Ghost whines, nuzzling into her hand, and she hugs him tight. “You’ll be okay.”

He follows her down the stairs, as if to walk her out, and when she gets to the door, he licks the back of her leg. Sansa can’t help but give him one last big hug. Unfortunately, it’s what get’s her caught.

“Where are you going?”  
  


She turns to find Jon watching her, brow creased in confusion. Everything soft and tender she felt for him as drained from her body like a tap. She wishes she could say the past 15 minutes have calmed her down some, but if anything, she’s more angry. She’s ready to explode. 

“Home.” She answers flatly. 

He has the nerve to give her once over, from her bag to her face. “You’re not sick, are you?”

“I’m sick of you. Does that count?”

His brow wrinkles even more. 

“My keys. My work phone. My laptop—they’re all in the office.” Saying the words causes her freedom to really hit her. She feels dizzy with it, enough for her anger to wane some. “Have a nice life.”

Sansa reaches for the door only to be stopped. He doesn’t grab her—he doesn’t need to. All he has to do is touch her, right on her lower back, like she had seen him do to Val in the kitchen all those mornings ago. The familiarity of it jars her, a stark contrast to the coolness she had known all this time. 

  
She doesn’t move.

“What are you doing?”

God, he’s never looked so earnest, not in her presence. His dark eyes are drowning with something she doesn’t quite understand and his jaw is tight and his hand—it’s still there, light as a feather but still burning. That loyalty, that tenderness she once had for him surges up and she stomps it back down. Maybe it’s not gone completely, but that would come with time. She moves away, further from his reach.

“Running away.” She swallows. “That’s what puppies do when you don’t take care of them.”

Sansa never sees it, the understanding that must flicker across his face, because she opens the door and doesn’t hesitate once as she takes a step forward. And then another. And then another. They’re small. Her hand is still on the door knob. She looks at the street, and even though it’s her last time seeing it, it doesn’t look any different. Is that because she doesn’t care?

“Fuck you.” She hisses, eyes blurring. “I deserved better.”

She slams the door shut. She gets into her car. The only time she looks back is in the rearview, and she sees him standing in the driveway. Ghost is at his side. 

She does care. 

She’s always cared too much. 

* * *

Sansa spends her first day being unemployed sleeping. 

Like the dead. On instinct, she woke up at five in the morning like she had every day for the past couple years. She was fumbling for her phone to turn off her alarm when she realized she didn’t have a job anymore. Then she went back to sleep.

She leaves the house for yoga at four, well rested and as lax as a cat. Even though the purpose of yoga is to destress, it’s pretty fun doing it when you aren’t stressed too. 

Her and Gilly go get smoothies afterwards, like they always have. When she arrived at the studio and found Gilly waiting for her in the front, she expected the first thing she said to her to be something about her quitting. But she didn’t. She hugged her, told her she liked her pants, and they went inside. Now, though, as they’re sitting across from each other outside, Gilly is watching her thoughtfully and she knows the inevitable is coming. Sansa decides to get ahead of it. 

“You’ve probably already heard about yesterday. And I’m really sorry I left like that.” She says. “I’m really grateful to Sam for giving me the job, but—”

“Don’t even sweat it.” Gilly reassures her. “Jon isn’t the easiest person to work for. You’re a saint for putting up with him for this long. Sam understands that more than anyone.” 

Hearing his name is like poking at a bruise. It hurts. She has dedicated her entire day to not thinking about him, because thinking about him only makes the betrayal hurt even more. 

“Anyway. It’s done. It’s the past.” Gilly shrugs, smiling tentatively. “I think we should drink to your freedom.”

She holds her smoothie up, and although Sansa doesn’t much feel like it, she touches cups with her and gives her a smile. “Let’s.”

The cost of her freedom begins to sink in on her way home. How is she gonna find another job? Having earned Tyrion’s ire, the amount of places that would hire her has probably been minimized again. Thankfully, she had saved a lot of money because working for Jon meant having no social life, so she’d be okay for awhile. But what would happen when that money ran out? She’d either be homeless, or she’d tuck her tail in between her legs and move back home. 

But would she really be tucking her tail in? She proved herself and then some. After she left Joffrey, her pride refused to let her go back to Winterfell. She had left with Joffrey against her parent’s wishes. They had all warned her about him, and the last thing she wanted to do was call them and tell them they were right. So she moved into a two bedroom with three other roommates from her study group at school, and she used her student loans to pay her slice of rent while she tried to find a job. The only steady flow of income that she had was coming from babysitting for her neighbors in the building, and she branched out to putting ads online—she always knew she was good at taking care of people, she just didn’t know she could make money from it. And then she started working for Jon, and she made enough money to get her own place. She had done it all without their help. Would it really be so bad to ask for it now?

She missed home, anyway. She hadn’t been back in a year. She missed her family and she missed her friends. What was left here for her besides the friendship she built with Gilly? She loves her and little Sam dearly. It just isn’t enough to make her stay. But there’s a small part of her that feels like she’s leaving her dream behind, that dream to see the world outside of Winterfell, but look where that dream had gotten her so far.

Maybe it just isn’t worth it.

  
  


That evening, as Sansa is making her way to her apartment, she holds a roll of masking tape in a plastic bag. One thing that would help her if she decided to move. She still isn’t completely sold. Just buying it made her feel incredibly glum, so she bought herself some ice cream to cheer herself up. Now, as she bumps her car door closed, she pulls the spoon out of her mouth and squints into the darkness.

There’s a figure crouched on the steps to the units upstairs. It’s close to eight, and the neighborhood kids have gone inside. She would have gotten back earlier, but she stoped at home depot, and then there was her ice cream trip. It’s not completely dark, but it’s dark enough for suspicious characters to lurk in the shadows.

Sansa stares at the figure for a moment longer, before reaching for her taser inside of her purse. The steps are only a little ways away from her apartment. She speedwalks past them and the figure—the man, too broad to be anything else—occupying them. She holds her ice cream cup on top of her taser and turns the key into the doorknob. Behind her, she’s aware of footsteps approaching, and her nerves spike in response and the key is jamming inside the lock.

“Sansa.”

She screams, nearly dropping her taser. But as soon as she turns around, she discovers there’s no need for it. It’s just Jon. She hadn’t recognized him because of the hoodie, but sure enough, it’s him. His voice. His stare. 

That’s when it hits her.

It’s _Jon._

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He says.

She thinks this is the first time she’s ever heard that word come out of his mouth. Scratch that—she knows. First, he’s at her house, lurking like a creeper, and now he’s apologizing to her. She pinches herself to make sure this isn’t some unpleasant dream.

Jon’s eyes pass over her, her gross, sweaty hair and her sports bra and matching yoga pants and at last, her taser. He blinks several times. 

“Is that _bedazzled_?”

Blushing, Sansa shoves it back in her purse, crossing her arms over her chest defensively. “What are you doing here?”

“You live here.” says Jon, stuffing his hands in his pockets. 

When it seems like that’s all he’s gonna say, she just nods, wondering if he took too many pucks to the head. 

His mouth turns down at the corners. “Why?”

Her temper stretches, and snaps. She places her hands on her hips. “What do you want?”

His hands leave his pocket as he squares his shoulders. His expression is just how she remembers. Calm. Collected. Barren. She would think there was nothing wrong at all, if it wasn’t for the way he was scratching his jaw. He’s moved way too many times in the span of five minutes. Almost like he’s fidgeting.

Almost like he’s nervous. 

But then he’s talking, no, _demanding_ : “I want to talk to you.” And just like that, the suspicion leaves her head.

“No.” The word comes out so easily, she’s honestly proud. She picks up her keys from the floor, and she turns lock again. It opens this time.

A sharp exhale sounds from behind her. “It won’t take long.”

“I’ve given you two years of my life. Why should I give you anything else?”

Sansa says it before she can stop herself, and now the words are in the air, pulsing with the hurt she infused with them like some alive thing. Embarrassed, she pushes the door open, ready to be rid of this conversation and him. 

But then his hand touches her back lightly, like it did yesterday. Before that, she could not remember a time he ever touched her with intention. Not a handshake or a shoulder pat. She hadn’t realized until then how much she wanted him to.

“Please.” He says.

She should shut the door in face. She should tell him to go to hell. 

“Five minutes.” She mutters, opening the door a little wider. “Hurry up and come in, before someone sees you.”

* * *

If he was a guest, she would offer him water. 

But he isn’t a guest, and she isn’t going to waste one more drop of courtesy on him. When Sansa shuts the door and snags the latch in place, she stands right in that small area of tile she referred to as the entryway. She won’t give him anymore than this and his five minutes. 

But as always, Jon breaks any rules given to him and makes his own. His eyes scan her apartment as he walks around like he has all the time in the world. His lips pressed thin at the leak stain in the popcorn ceiling.

“You never told me you lived here.”

This again. She sighs. “How’d you even find out?”

“It was on your application.” His gaze leaves the ceiling and finds hers again. She wishes he was still looking at the ceiling. “You should have told me.”

“Because we’ve had heart to hearts before?”

“Because it’s dangerous here. If you told me, I would have figured something out for you.”

She is suddenly struck with the realization that he feels guilty. How ironic that it’s about the wrong thing. 

“Why are you here, Jon?” She says, exhausted suddenly. “Last time I checked, you weren’t my landlord.”

Now, he rounds the couch. He waits until he’s standing in front of her, until they’re face to face. His head hitches up, almost defiantly. “I want you to come back.”

Ten seconds pass, and the entire time, Sansa doesn’t breathe. “What?”

“I want you to come back to me.”

_To me._ The last two words echo in her head louder than any of the ones that came before them and she has no choice but to come to terms with the fact that she has serious issues.

“You were right.” She watches him swallow visibly. “You deserved better. I should have given that to you. I’m sorry.”

There’s that word again. Sorry. Not once has he told her that in the past two years but somehow within the last ten minutes, he’s told her it twice. Her head feels like it’s spinning. 

“I fired Tyrion. He’s gone. You don’t have to worry about him anymore—”

“You did what?” Sansa squeaks.

Jon says it again, uncharacteristically patient, “I fired him.”

She opens her mouth to speak, but nothing seems suitable enough to explain to him that he has lost his little hockey addled mind. She breathes very slowly, in and out, trying to calm down. 

It doesn’t work.

She all but yells, “ _Why_ would you do that?” 

Jon frowns, clearly bemused at her outburst. “He upset you.”

“He’s your agent, Jon! You’re in the last year of your contract.” Now, she is shouting. “You’re gonna need a freaking agent to help get you another one! You need _him.”_

As much as she’s loathed to admit it, Tyrion is a shark. If anyone can get Jon a good contract with a good team that wouldn’t take advantage of him, it’s him. Since he got out of the hospital, that’s all he’s been worried about, especially with all the experts in his ear, telling him he’s on the last legs of his career. 

“I need you.” He insists. “Come back to me.”

She really, really needs him to stop saying it like that.

Sansa elects to ignore him. “You need to call Tyrion. Hire him back. Tell him you’ll give him a raise—“

“Will you come back if I do?”

“Why?” Her voice cracks. “Why do you want me back so bad?”

His mouth opens and closes. Then it opens again. “Ghost misses you.”

“You went through the trouble of asking Sam for my application and driving all the way here because Ghost misses me.” Sansa says blankly.

He exhales through his nostrils, a determined, almost frantic huff. “We make a good team.”

“Not good enough.” She retorts.

“I’ll pay you more.”

Embarrassingly enough, she considers the offer for five whole seconds. “ _No_.” She emphasizes. “I don’t want your money. It was never—”

She stops herself, jaw clenched.

“Then tell me what you do want.” His voice comes out quiet. Gentler than she’s ever heard it. It almost makes her want to forget everything that transpired in the last 24 hours. “I’ll give it to you.”

Her eyes are burning, and she turns away just a fraction.

“You should have asked me that before. What I wanted was a boss who said please and thank you regularly. What I wanted was a boss who wouldn’t let his agent say mean things about me in front of his face. I wanted a boss who I felt comfortable enough to ask for a week off to go see my brother get married. I wanted a boss who cared enough about me to know my brother was even getting married.” Sansa inhales deeply, closing her eyes for a long time and willing the tears to recede. “I wanted better. You can’t give that to me.”

There’s a long stretch of silence, and when he speaks again, she knows he’s behind her. She tries to think if they’ve ever been this close.

“I can try.” He says firmly, but she thinks she hears the edge of a plea bleeding through. 

Sansa undoes the latch, and opens the door, wide enough for him to step through. 

“It’s too late.” She tells him.

* * *

It’s Friday. Her flight is booked and her bags are packed and everything is settled except for one last thing.

Which is why she’s sitting in front of Jon Snow’s house again.

Right before he left last night, he told her some of her stuff was still back at the house, and that she could come by and get it. He had taken her hand for a pathetic second, Sansa thought he was holding it, until he pressed a key into her palm.

“So you can do it when I’m gone.” He said, not quite meeting her eyes. “Or—if you change your mind. You can come by whenever.”

Then he left. 

She had actually been determined to let anything she left at Jon’s house rot into tatters, until she discovered while packing that her grandmother’s earrings were nowhere to be found. That was when she unfortunately remembered she had worn them when she went with Jon to his last physical. 

Her grandmother had always claimed they had special powers, and honestly, Sansa believed her. She won her first trophy in those earrings. She got her first kiss in those earrings. She took her SAT’s in those earrings. She couldn’t just go to Robb and Jeyne’s wedding without wearing them. It’d be just as bad cursing them. 

So here she is, against her better judgement, about to walk into this house again. For the last time, she tells herself. For real this time. Unfortunately, his Range Rover is still in the driveway, so she knows he’s here. But there’s another car parked in front of the house too, so hopefully, he’ll be too preoccupied to try to convince her to stay. 

She better head inside before that changes. 

“Get in, get the earrings, and get out.” Sansa mutters to herself, walking up the driveway. She hears Ghost barking. He never barks—he must know she’s here. In her head, she amends her list of priorities. _Get in, give Ghost a kiss, get the earrings, and get out._

Sounds like a plan. 

The minute she opens the door, Ghost is all over. Sansa gets down on her knees to greet him, enveloping his huge body in her arms. When he licks her cheek, she doesn’t even complain, she’s missed him too much.

“There you are.”

As soon as she sees him, she knows something is wrong. First of all, he’s dressed semi formally—a dark gray button down and dark slacks. As far as she knows, all he’s supposed to be doing is meeting with his trainer today, nothing professional scheduled. Second of all, he’s smiling. At least, he’s trying to. Sansa has seen him smile on five separate occasions and that is exactly how she knows this one is wrong; it’s more of a grimace than it is a smile and it is painfully awkward and she would like nothing more than for him to stop doing it. 

“I didn’t know you were home.” Sansa says, feeling uneasy as she rises to her feet. 

That smile again. Jeez, it’s actually starting to scare her. “Where else would I be?”

Sansa opens her mouth to rattle off his schedule for the day which despite quitting, she still has memorized before she notices an unpleasant looking man standing off to the side, arms crossed over his chest, watching him carefully. 

What’s going on?

Things only get exponentially weirder when as soon as he’s within reach, Jon wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her into him. His body is solid and warm and despite all of this, being so close to it makes her feel like she’s being plunged into ice cold water. 

She just. _Stands_ there. 

“Do you trust me?” His lips brush the shell of her ear and an embarrassing sound nearly leaves her mouth before she swallows it, dry and whole. 

And what is she supposed to say? He’s this close to her, with his hands on hers and his lips on her ear and what else is she supposed to say except what he wants her to? So that he doesn’t pull away? Sansa doesn’t trust herself to open her mouth yet, so she just nods very smally. 

And then Jon pulls back—

Only to kiss her.

His mouth is just as soft as it looks; yet firm and uncompromising. He takes the lead and she lets him gladly. The fact that only a second passes before she kisses him back should definitely concern her, but her mind is blissfully blank. 

When his mouth leaves hers, her lips feel cold. And then it all comes rushing back to her—her common sense, everything that had happened the day before, and the sole, unchangeable fact that up until two days ago, this man had been her boss. And there’s also the fact that before that, he had been her worst enemy.

She swears, she swears to god that he looks at her mouth before he looks into her eyes again, and the nod he gives her is minute, barely there, before he turns back to the man in the corner, who had gotten a free show. But Sansa can’t find it in herself to care. Jon’s hand is on her back again. 

“Mr. Thorne, I’d like you to meet my fiancée, Sansa Stark.”

* * *

The bastard kissed her _stupid_. 

Sansa spends the first half of the conversation at Jon’s side dazed and mute. He does all the talking, his hand resting on her knee. She feels herself slowly thawing out and coming to, and her mind begins to race. 

The man they’re sitting across from introduced himself to her as Alliser Thorne. His eyes are beady and his voice is perpetually snide. The suitcase he carries is cheap, with peeling leather and he’s balding at the middle of his ruddy red head. Sansa focuses on these details as she sifts through the conversation, picking out the important words. _Immigration. Visa. Fiancée_.

_Fiancée._

This motherfucker. 

She hates cursing, but as she slowly starts to realize what’s going on, every other appropriate word in the english dictionary just seems to fall short. He’s a _motherfucker_ —predilection for MILF porn aside. How dare he kiss her stupid and then drag her into this mess? _Do you trust me?_ Like that sufficiently prefaced what was about to happen. When people usually had conversations about trust, they were followed with potentially difficult, but reasonable requests. 

Not committing a goddamn _felony_.

“You didn’t file any paperwork.” Mr. Thorne says, almost accusatory. 

“We meant to get around to it.” Jon says. “it’s just—we wanted to put it off as long as possible. We’re private people.”

“Your privacy could have gotten you deported.” Mr. Thorne says snidely.

Deported? She hadn’t known he was facing deportation. Suddenly, it clicks for her. All the nights he spent staying up. His stress. His blatant disregard of the doctor’s warnings. His determination to play hockey again. He was probably here on a work visa. If it was conditional on him being able to play for the Watch…

“You seem surprised.” 

Sansa blinks fast to find Mr. Thorne’s eyes narrowed at her in suspicion. She does her best to cover it up. “I was under the impression the paperwork wasn’t urgent.” Then she reaches for Jon’s hand. “You should have told me...muffin.”

Unfortunately, muffin is the closest she could get to saying motherfucker without raising a few red flags. How could he not have told her? She would have helped him find a good lawyer, or at least, a better solution than this.

When Jon meets her eyes, she knows that he’d prefer motherfucker. 

“I didn’t wanna worry you.” He says eventually, squeezing her hand. “I know how stressed you are about telling your parents.”

Oh, he’s good at this. Has he always been so good at lying? Sansa wonders in that moment if he’s ever lied to her, because unless she was in on it, she wouldn’t have known.

Thorne latches onto that, eyeing the two of them. “Your parents know nothing about your relationship?”

“I’m meeting them this weekend, actually. Her brother’s getting married. We leave tomorrow morning for the week.”

She knows it’s a lie, but just the prospect of Jon meeting her parents makes her wanna vomit.

“We can start filing the paperwork now, but the interview would have to take place on the 22nd.” Mr. Thorne says stonily. 

Sansa gulps. “Interview?” 

“It’s simple stuff. We’ll ask you about your life together. What you know about each other. Make sure you’re not just marrying for the visa.”

Her laugh sounds a little high in her own ears. “People do that?”

“You’d be surprised.” Thorne grumbles. “One big scheme just to end up being deported and serving time.”

Serving time.

Prison time.

She’s gonna pass out.

“I have an opening at four.” Thorne informs them. 

“Sounds great.” Jon says. 

She remains in her seat when Jon walks Mr. Thorne to the door, unable to move. But the minute she hears the door shut, Sansa scrambles to her feet so fast she almost face plants. She meets him halfway only to shove him. hard. Then again.

“Have you lost your mind?” She shouts shrilly. 

Jon’s hands are extended in a defensive gesture. “I panicked. Look—”

“So now I have to panic too? I am _not_ going to jail for you—”

“You’re not going to jail.” He interrupts her. 

Sansa laughs, too loudly. “You’re damn right I’m not going to jail because I’m not doing it!”

His hands are still in front of him, like he’s talking to a giant wild animal. Like he doesn’t deal with Ghost—who she strongly suspects is a lot more wolf than legally allowed–on a daily basis. 

“Listen—” 

“Did _you_ listen? Did you even hear what he just said? You could get deported forever and I could go to jail—”

“That’s only if we get caught.”

She honest to god _whimpers_.

“Sansa. Hey. Look at me.” And he grabs her by the upper arms—not roughly, but still firmly. “I’m not about to make you do anything you don’t wanna do, okay? What I did—it was shitty. I shouldn’t have done it, and I really am sorry for dragging you into it. But you doing this….it would really be a huge favor to me.”

Huge? Yeah, no shit. She’d be committing a _crime._ Sansa crosses her arms over her chest. “Why can’t you just apply for another work visa?”

One of Jon’s arms falls to his side, while the other moves up to rake a hand through his hair. “I forgot to fill out some paperwork and I missed a deadline.”

“How did you do that?”

“They sent it while I was in the hospital.”

And that’s when it hits her. 

_She_ was the one in charge of the goddamn mail. 

She had been so shaken by the accident, Sansa had hardly left his side. She couldn’t even leave the house to go grocery shopping, checking the mail was out of the question. When she had gotten to it, a whopping three weeks later, she hadn’t gone through any of it, only checked for bills and left the rest on his nightstand. Who knows when he finally got to it?

This is her fault.

“It’s not your fault.” 

There he goes, doing that weird fucking mind reading thing again. She would have hit him if she already didn’t feel so bad. 

“Even if I could fill it out, I don’t know if I have a job to get another work visa. I can’t keep doing this much longer.” His jaw clenches. “The doctors said it. Sam said it. Jeor said it. I’m gonna have to retire soon. That’s fine. I’ll make my peace with that. But...I can’t go back there. I wouldn’t ask this of you if I had any other choice.”

Sansa knows how much it takes for him to admit both of these things. And it’s probably that. And the fact that she’s at least one of the reasons he’s in this mess. And the fact that despite what he did yesterday, she still cares about him. She can’t just turn it off. If she let this happen, after he all but told her he’d rather die than go back...she’d never forgive herself. 

“Jon.” She says, but nothing else. Her tongue is stuck to the roof of her mouth and her palms are sweating, because how else do you tell someone that you’re willing to marry them? 

But he takes her pause as something else. “I’ll pay you.” He says quickly. 

Tempting. _Really_ tempting. Sansa forces herself to shake her head. “You don’t have to—”

“I’ll give you one million. And I’ll pay off your student loans.”

Every single protest she has dies on her lips. 

  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Sansa drags the strap of her white dress back up her shoulder with one hand, absentmindedly touching her hair to make sure it hasn’t fallen victim to Nevada’s heat with the other. 

“You look fine.” Jon tells her. 

Back at the hotel room they used to freshen up and change, he told her she looked pretty. Jon didn’t call women pretty, at least not where she could hear him. She knew he was probably saying it to make her feel better, so she hadn’t responded. But now, for the sake of her nerves, she decides to believe him. Not that she has any choice. There’s no going back now. 

Vegas had been her idea. Her condition, actually. The minute she came to terms with the fact she’d have to bring Jon with her to Winterfell in order to tell her parents, she knew that this was the way it had to be. “That’s the deal.” She had told him, hands on her hips. “Take it or leave it.”

Jon took it, but not happily. Which is frankly something that Sansa can’t wrap her head around. He should be happy she’s willing to marry him without any delay. The longer they waited, the more flimsy their ruse became. 

“We don’t have to do this now.” He tells her again. “We can still wait.”

  
  


They got up at four am and caught a red eye to get here. They're on the way to the chapel, for god’s sake. She’s wearing her grandmother’s earrings. He’s wearing dress shoes. They’re on the _verge_ of said and done. And even if they weren’t, the thought of her family planning her wedding to Jon Snow—the same Jon Snow they’d spent the last decade and some change worshipping—makes her more nauseous than saying two measly words and signing some papers.

“Yes.” She shuts her eyes briefly. “We do.”

So they end up at the chapel two blocks away from the hotel they stayed at for a matter of hours without anything eventful. Sansa doesn’t realize the car has stopped until Jon is opening her door, offering his hand. He must have left his cold feet in the car.

He flicks a glance at her shoes. “Were these really necessary? You’re gonna break your neck.”

She’s wearing the first and only designer item she bought for herself when the money from working for him started to add up: Gianvito Rossi strappy metallic four inch sandals. After she purchased them, she felt too bad to wear them, knowing there were wiser things she could have spent them on. But today’s her wedding day. Even if it isn’t how she pictured it—it’s still her day. And she’s gonna look good. 

“You’re just mad I’m taller than you.” Sansa tilts her chin up in the air.

Not even thirty seconds later, she nearly face plants thanks to a crack in the sidewalk, until Jon’s hands find her waist, steadying her. The fabric of her dress is regrettably thin, and she can feel the warmth of his skin against hers. She swallows, wishing she had more than one white dress in her closet.

Behind her, his voice is perfectly level. “What was that, smartass?” 

“God, I cannot _wait_ to divorce you.” She snaps.

Sansa would have stormed ahead of him, but she doesn’t trust herself to not trip again, and she knows damn well Jon isn’t above laughing. So they enter the chapel together, approaching the front desk. They’re greeted by two people, who are considerably droll for employees of a place people get married at. Sansa catches the woman yawning as she hands them the paperwork, and assumes it must have something to do with the hour. Do they get many customers at 10 in the morning?

Their flight to Juneau is at 11:30, so they fill out the paperwork quickly, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. Jon doesn’t look at the price of the wedding packages, just chooses one that includes pictures; those would come in handy later for legal purposes. But besides that, Sansa is given a silk white rose bouquet and a cheap rhinestone tiara with a veil attached, wrapped in plastic. She stares at the latter for a long time, something like nostalgia in her throat.

She used to be the kind of girl that dreamed of getting married, and this is certainly falling short of every single one of that girl’s expectations. But that was before Joffrey. Before all the failed dates she went on in defiant hope of finding the right kind of love. That was before she gave up altogether, and Jon became the only man in her life. And now, with two words and some paperwork, everything would stay that way. 

This is what she’s thinking about, standing in front of the aging chapel with the minister’s words going in one ear and out the other. This is gonna be her life for the next five years. But wouldn’t have been this way anyway? Sans the marriage, just how long had she been intending to stay with Jon as his assistant? It wasn’t a job she could have moved forward in, or excelled in. And she never really thought about doing either. How long would she have worked for him only to wake up one day, years down the road, having realized she wasted her life away? And for someone who didn’t even care enough to defend her?

Jon didn’t know about Tyrion’s advances towards her, she had never told him, but he didn’t have to know to just speak up for her. Yeah, he fired him, but only because for some reason he found someone who cooked his meals and did his laundry more valuable than his agent. Sansa realizes she hasn’t forgiven him. It’s not like he cares anyway, but if he thinks just because she’s his wife now that she’s gonna resume picking up after him then he’s got another thing coming.

The vows are easy enough. All she has to say is _I do._ The phrase doesn’t come out any easier even though she’s said it about six different times. Jon does it better than her. Not so much confidently, but like he wants to get this over with. 

“Are you exchanging rings?”

The minister looks at both of them with bleary red eyes and it occurs to Sansa he might actually be high. She’s so numb with shock at this realization, no answer leaves her mouth. Jon is the one that speaks up, but he ends up shocking her too.

“Right here.”

After withdrawing his hand from his pocket, Jon holds three rings in his palm. Two are simple round bands of white gold, and the other is—

Ridiculous.

That’s her first thought, staring at the diamond ring being dwarfed by his palm. It’s _ridiculous._

 _  
_Ridiculously beautiful and ridiculously expensive. He must have had to withdraw from his account for it, because she knows damn well he doesn’t carry that much cash on him. She’s the one responsible for paying his bills.

“We didn’t really have time for the whole engagement ring thing.” He says, and he’s not quite meeting her eyes. “But I picked this up. Just something small.” He slides the band on first, and the ring in question. They fit perfectly. 

And she just stands there. 

Longer than she cares to admit. Ten seconds. Then 20. Then 25. The entire time Jon is holding out the last ring, the only one big enough in the selection to fit him. Finally, swallowing down against the quivering feeling rising in her chest, she takes it, sliding it onto his left ring finger.

There’s a moment, where she’s still holding his hand—why, she doesn’t know. But she’s suddenly all too aware of his hand in hers when the minister declares, “You may now kiss the bride.”

She kisses him this time. It’s hurried so she doesn’t lose her nerve but determined because she’ll be damned if he kisses her stupid again. Her eyes are closed, and she can still see the flash of the camera. That’s what this is about. All she has to do is give them an efficient show, and they’re in the clear. 

But—

Jon’s other hand, the hand that isn’t holding hers back, is cradling the nape of her neck and his mouth is almost extraordinarily soft for such a rough person. He’s slowing them down, guiding them somewhere and she has no clue where they're going. But somehow she knows this kiss is a promise, just as she knows she’s safe with him. 

He pulls away first, just like he did last time, and Sansa hates herself for being so lost in him that she let him have it. The flash of the camera blinds her momentarily of everything, and by the time she blinks the stars out of her eyes, Jon is facing the camera. Sansa turns before the next flash comes. She doesn’t want to be caught looking at him. 

They head back to the car they rented. The clock on the dash reads 10:20. They still have to go back to the hotel and get their bags, but Sansa feels as if she’s moving in slow motion. As if the world on its axis is just sludging by. 

“How much did it cost?” She finds her voice to ask eventually, thumb brushing the ring she can’t stop staring at.

Jon’s hands flex against the steering wheel. “Enough to be believable.”

Believable.

Sansa blinks several times. For the rest of the ride, she doesn’t say a word. 

Back in the hotel room, she divests herself of the slip gown that served as a wedding dress, replacing it with jeans and a flowery pink blouse. She scrubs all the makeup on her face off her face harsher than she should. 

“We’ve gotta go.” Jon calls outside the bathroom. “You ready?”

Sansa balls the veil and tiara up, throwing them in the bathroom trash. “Coming.”

* * *

  
She spends the first two hours of the plane ride staring at the movie being shown on the overhead screen more than actually watching it, trying not to succumb to her rustling stomach. Then she spends the next hour attempting to summon the courage to get her Jane Eyre copy from her carry on, something she brought more for the purpose of being snide than actually entertaining herself. Then she spends the hour after that, the very last hour, watching the clock run out and trying to stave off the panic sinking into her bones. She sticks her head between her legs, considering asking for a plastic bag.

“You don’t usually get airsick.” Jon notes.

She’d flown with him to Europe last year for the preseason exhibition games because he decided he couldn’t stand to spend a couple days without his lackey. He spent both rides dead to the world, so she doubts he remembers anything about her flight tendencies. Sansa doesn’t point this out, though. She doesn’t have the energy to bicker. 

“I’m not.” Her voice is muffled into her thigh. “I’m homesick. The thought of going home is actually making me sick.”

“I thought you had a good relationship with your parents.” 

He _assumed._ And what right did he have to assume that? He never once inquired about her life outside of him. He didn’t care enough to. 

Again, Sansa swallows the words. She reminds herself she doesn’t have the energy to bicker, sitting up straight. “I do, yeah. They’re great.” 

Jon raises a brow. “But you didn’t wanna get married with them there.”

Is he _still_ on this?

“I didn’t want to waste six months planning a wedding that you’d be deported before you could see.” She snaps. “Excuse me for trying to help you.”

“Seems like you were trying to help yourself as much as me.”

“Excuse me?”

“You act like we wouldn’t have had any choice in the matter.” Jon leans back. “We’re the ones getting married. We could have just told them no.”

Sansa almost barks out a laugh. “There’s no saying no to my parents.”

“Just because you can’t say no to them doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”

Easy for him to say. Jon could tell her parents no and they’d probably fall over to accommodate him, being their lord and savior and all. But he doesn’t know that, so it’s not something she can blame him for.

She’s going to anyway. 

She’s resolved to ignore him, but Jon isn’t having that. He nudges her with one of those toned arms of his, shaking a packet of papers she noticed him flipping through. “These are all the questions they’re gonna ask us in that interview next weekend.”

Begrudgingly, Sansa takes it, doing her own once over. Questions about her spouse and their lives together—honest to god she almost gags—fill the pages. They’re pretty easy for the most part, even reminding her of the questionnaires she used to bubble in in magazines. 

“Seems simple enough.” She says. “I know most of this stuff about you.”

“Same here.” He leans in, turning a page for her. “We’ve just gotta figure out this whole section here.”

The scent of his aftershave is enough to distract her only momentarily, before she’s angling her body away from him, trying to focus. She does her best disbelieving scoff, ignoring her heart in her chest. “You know all these things about me?”

Jon shrugs. “I pay attention.”

“You didn’t even know where I lived until a couple of days ago.”

“Besides that.” And he almost looks insulted. “I pay attention to you.”

“Oh yeah?” Sansa flips back to the front page, reading aloud. “What am I allergic to?”

“Strawberries.” 

She stares at him, refusing to let her eyes widen.

“Too many make you itch.” Jon elaborates, and then gives her an almost disapproving look. “Doesn’t stop you from eating them.”

Okay. He knows he’s allergic to strawberries. She’s probably mentioned it offhandedly before. Why she would have done that, she has no clue, but she’ll give him this one thing. 

“What’s my religious background?”

“Pretty sure you’re jewish.”

Sansa latches onto that rather than the fact that he’s freaking right. Again. “Pretty sure?”

“You referred to your grandmother Bubbie once when you were on the phone. That’s yiddish.” Jon says matter of factly. “You still celebrate Christmas, though. So one of your parents probably isn’t. Which one is it?”

For a moment, she thinks about ignoring him, but the possibility that that would bring him even more satisfaction stops her. “My mom.” She admits under her breath.

His mouth quirks up in the corners the tiniest bit.

“But I was talking about my great grandmother.” She has to physically restrain herself from saying: _So there._ “How do you know yiddish, anyway?”

At that, the thing he’s doing with his mouth that could constitute as the smallest smile on the planet disappears. “My mom was jewish. Apparently.”

His mom. The only person who had a picture up in his house. The only mention of family he had ever made. That’s one thing Sansa doesn’t know anything about when it comes to him. She’d have to if they’re gonna pull this off.

Jon must sense the direction of her thoughts, because he takes the reins of the conversation from her before she can urge them along that path. “Next question.”

She’ll bide her time. For now, she lets him have his way. “What’s my favorite food?”

“Lemon cake.” Then his mouth presses flat. There’s that disapproval again. “That’s not really a food, but you don’t seem to care.”

Sansa can’t decide what pisses her off more, him having the audacity to judge her or him being right. Again. She goes with the latter, flinging out another question, one she’s sure is impossible for him to answer. 

“What was my first concert?”

“One Direction.”

Her jaw hinges.

“Did I get that one right?” He’s doing that smile that she suddenly realizes is a _smirk_ again. “I’ll admit, I guessed. But you always play them while you’re cleaning. And you know too many of their songs by heart to like them a normal amount. It’s actually terrifying when you really—”

“How do you know this stuff about me?” Sansa cuts him off swiftly, inwardly forbidding herself to blush and give his theory any credibility. 

“Why wouldn’t I know it?” Jon looks at her, completely unfazed. “You’re my best friend.”

She actually _laughs._ Loudly and offkey unfortunately for her fellow passengers, but she doesn’t really care at that moment. If she doesn’t laugh, she’ll do something ridiculous. Like vomit. Or jump out of the window. 

“What’s funny?” His brow is pulled low in that defensive way he’s got that somehow makes him look confused and intimidating at the same time. 

“You can’t even tell me good morning most days, and now we’re friends?”

“We’ve always been friends.” Jon insists. 

Sansa snorts. “Friends hang out with each other.”

“We hang out.” He says immediately. “We watch TV together.”

And she genuinely sits there, trying to think of what the hell he could be talking about. They’ve never sat down and watched tv together in their life. She doesn’t even think they’ve ever sat on the same couch together. 

“If you’re referring to _you_ watching TV while I iron your clothes, that doesn’t count.”

Jon says nothing, but she can tell this is something he vehemently disagrees with by the way his lower lip is jutting out the slightest bit. 

“You have a bedroom at my house.” He says, almost accusingly.

“I _used_ to.” Sansa corrects. “And I only stayed in it because you needed me when you got hurt. I haven’t actually slept in it since.”

He blinks. “We literally have matching christmas sweaters.”

“Not on purpose!” She says, maybe a little too loudly, fully aware of the fact that she’s blushing. “I had extra yarn left over from making booties for little Sam. It wasn’t like— _intentional_.” That’s the curse of only having about three people you care about in your immediate life. You don’t have many people to spoil. So she chose to make Jon a sweater for his birthday, stupidly assuming he’d at least say thank you.

He never did.

“You never wore yours, anyway.” Sansa mumbles. 

“Because I didn’t wanna mess it up.” He tells her, as if that should have been obvious. 

Did he ever tell her that? No. Did he ever tell her anything? No. He just expected her to read his mind. Well, she’s done with that, thank you very much. And after these five years are up, she’ll be done with him. 

“You’re not wearing your ring.” He sounds almost defensive. “I’m not assuming you don’t like it.”

Sansa’s finger had been bare since they left the hotel room. She didn’t think he noticed, but she forgot there was little that he didn’t notice. She tucked both in the front pocket of her suitcase.

“That’s because we can’t just walk in there wearing rings.” She says. “They’ll know.”

“Yeah.” Jon says archly. “That’s the point, remember?”

“You don’t get it. My family are huge Direwolf fans.”

Again, he doesn’t look bothered in the slightest. In fact, he speaks to her very slowly, as if she’s stupid. “It’s Alaska.”

“Yeah, I know it’s Alaska, dummy.” Sansa snaps. “But my family isn’t normal. Any super fan you encountered during your Direwolf days, multiply that by ten: that’s my family. The Direwolves are _their_ One Direction, okay? And you’re like 2013 Harry Styles to them. Making sense now? I am bringing home 2013 Harry Styles to a bunch of fangirls and I am telling them that I married him.”

Jon frowns. “Which one is he?”

God, he really is hopeless. 

“That’s not the point. What I’m saying is we have to ease them into it. So no rings until we tell them.”

“Your rules. As long as you tell them.” He slides her a look. “You did tell them I was coming, right?”

Sansa makes a helpless sort of sound in the back of her throat that she turns into a laugh, which doesn’t seem to convince him any, because if anything, he looks a little alarmed. 

“In a way.” She admits finally, on the tail end of a wince. 

* * *

So much had happened in the last 24 hours that Sansa is of the position that she would have been completely justified in not calling her parents and telling them at all. 

She did, though. And she called Jeyne too. She told them both she was bringing someone. It was the closest she could get to telling the truth without lying to them, because Jon wasn’t her friend and he sure as hell wasn’t her boyfriend—

He’s her husband.

So when Jeyne and her mother keep pestering her, all she replies is, “Just someone.”

It works, until it doesn’t. Until they’ve taken the second plane from Juneau to Winterfell. Until the pilot is telling them to buckle their seatbelts and prepare for landing, until the wheels touch down and they are on the tarmac, and it really freaking hits her.

Jon Snow is in Winterfell.

He’s in Winterfell with _her._

“You go ahead. I’ll get it.” Jon says, when she tries to reach for her luggage. “That way you have time to tell them.”

But she doesn’t _want_ to tell them. She doesn’t want to tell them at all.She would rather do anything else. She’d rather shave her head or eat Ghost’s dog food or get a root canal. 

But would she rather spend five years in prison?

She knows her answer.

So she nods and gets off the damn plane.

Winterfell doesn’t have an airport as much as it just has one huge space for all the planes to land. So it’s not like Jon can lose her as long as she doesn’t leave the premises completely. She won’t pretend that she doesn’t strongly consider it. 

Especially at the sight of her mom and her best friend. 

Her mother is holding up an obnoxious sign that says welcome home and Jeyne is gesturing towards it like she’s Vanna White, doing jazz hands, and Sansa can’t help but momentarily forget, because two of her favorite people in the world are just 20 feet away and they look so damn happy to see her. 

She tackles Jeyne first, only because she’s closer and her mother is holding the sign. She almost knocks her off her feet, and they stumble around trying to find their balance, gasping for breath as they laugh.

“You look so pretty.” She gasps, pulling back.

“I got a facial.” Jeyne tells her all knowledgeable like, before narrowing her eyes teasingly. “You could have gotten one too if you came on time.”

Sansa winces. “Did I miss the seamstress?”

“No.” Her mother laughs. “She’s flirting with your uncle, thank god.”

Suddenly, Sansa remembers her situation, what she had just done five hours ago, and what she’s supposed to be doing. When her mother envelops her in a hug, she wants to shrink inside of herself. Instead, hoping she doesn’t sound too guilty, she mumbles into her shoulder, “Hi, Mommy.”

“You haven’t changed too much on me.” Her mother says when she pulls back to inspect her. Her hands frame her face, and those blue eyes that are just like hers go stern. “Never not come home for Christmas again. Promise?”

Not coming home for Christmas is quite literally the least of her transgressions. Still, Sansa smiles weakly. “Promise.”

“So?” Her mother says, sounding excited. “Where’s this boyfriend?”

“We didn’t scare him off already, did we?” Jeyne puts in, only half joking. “What exactly have you told him about us?”

She feels like she’s gonna pass out.

“There’s actually something I have to tell you.” She clears her throat. “Both of you. All of you, really—”

“Is that him?” Jeyne interrupts.

For a moment, Sansa actually refuses to look, which is really stupid, but then her mom is looking too and she has no choice but to try to see what they see in order to gauge just how much damage control she needs to do. 

He’s not _stupid,_ he decided to thankfully sling a yankees cap low over his brow so for at least a couple seconds more, it hides his face enough. Also he’s carrying two duffels on one arm— _show off—_ and her pink suitcase he’s urging along that she’s taken with her on every family trip all but screams who he is.

Her someone.

“Yep.” Sansa inhales and exhales a couple times. It doesn’t help. But she’s gotta do what she’s gotta do regardless. “That’s him.”

As he approaches them, he gives her this look that she’s not sure her mother and Jeyne miss. It’s entirely way too direct and accompanied with a small dip of his chin. They’ve always been good at talking without talking, strangely enough.

But unfortunately, Jon just asked if she told them, and instead of telling him she didn’t, she just smiles, feigning bemusement and innocence. It doesn’t fool him in the slightest. His mouth turns downward in the corners disapprovingly. When Sansa comes to stand next to him, hand on his shoulder, she can feel him wince. Introductions are his least favorite thing in the world. 

“Guys, this is my—” Husband doesn’t really feel natural and she’s not ready to tell them anyway. But _boyfriend_ is dishonest, and she’s not gonna lie to them anymore than she has to, so she clears her throat. “Jon. This is Jon.”

He relaxes his vice grip on one of the suitcases to stick his hand out, mouth not quite a smile, but something amiable and friendly nonetheless. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Stark. I’ve heard—”

“Oh my god.” A concerningly loud, choked sound erupts from Jeyne’s throat. Her hand flutters towards it, eyes growing wide as they move over Jon. Then back to Sansa. Then between the two. “You’re—he’s—what the _fuck_?”

Her reaction is actually better than Sansa expected it to be. 

Her mother’s reaction, though—that’s what’s worrying her. Because she’s just standing there, eyebrows raised, mouth parted in shock, and completely frozen. Only her eyes move, and they move _everywhere,_ from Jon to their luggage and then her and then back to Jon, she blinks so many times Sansa swears to god that she can _hear_ it, like they’re in a cartoon. 

She doesn’t take his hand. 

But Jon is quick on his feet—almost 20 years in the league and he’d have to be. He offers his hand to Jeyne, who thankfully has given him the opportunity with her outburst. “You’re the bride, right?”

“Yeah.” Jeyne nods like a bobblehead, until she realizes what she’s doing. “Yes. Um—Welcome. It’s so nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.” Then she pinned Sansa with a steely glare as if to say _NOT._

Her mother just hums.

Actually hums. She’s seemed to emerge from her stupor, and now she’s just staring at him. Unabashedly. Openly. She’s not even blinking anymore. Her mouth is thinning minutely.

Oh no. 

“We should probably get you guys back to the fort.” She smiles, but it’s not her pageant smile. It is distant and almost too polite. “It’ll be late soon. Come on.” 

“You’re in trouble.” Jeyne says to her under her breath, the minute her mother’s back is turned, and the worst part of it all is that she knows she’s right.

And she hasn’t even told her she’s _married_ yet.

* * *

Sansa’s phone starts vibrating up a storm as they’re cruising through town.

She knows exactly who it is.

Not so coincidentally, Jeyne’s thumbs are flying across her keyboard in the front seat. Probably deploying a litany of F-bombs and scathing accusations and wildly inappropriate comments about Jon’s body. Not to mention she’s probably confused. When they were younger, she had never made her hatred for Jon Snow a secret to Jeyne or her family, especially after the fiasco of her 16th birthday.

She’s gonna have a lot of explaining and PR work to do. But right now, she’s just too damn tired. So she reaches over Jon to punch the back of Jeyne’s seat, and turns her phone off.

Jon doesn’t even notice. He’s too busy looking out the window at town proper, which really isn’t anything special, even with the remodeled buildings and paint jobs. But she can admit she’s missed it all. Really missed it. Even if she’s only been away for over a year, there’s nothing like coming back home.

It’s just staying here that’s the problem.

“You never told me you were rich.” Jon says in an accusatory whisper, only low enough for her to hear.

And _finally,_ she realizes what he’s looking at. Stark General Store. Stark Parcel and Post. Stark Sporting Goods. Sansa crosses her arms over her chest, almost defensive. “My parents are rich.” 

And their parents. And their parents. 

“That’s something a rich person would say.” He says under his breath.

Sansa scowls, and thinks about hitting him. Keyword: thinks. Not acting on her thoughts should be rewardable by Nobel Peace Prize alone. 

But Jon isn’t done. Is he ever? “You think your parents would want you living like you do?”

“Keep talking and I’ll add a house to your running tab.” She hisses, knocking her knee into his a lot softer than she wants to. 

“I’ll buy you two if it means you don’t have to walk home with a bedazzled taser.” He mutters.

“If you’re so worried about me walking home, you can buy me a new car too.” 

Jon only raises his brows. “We can go buy it when we get back if you want, _muffin_.”

And this time, she _pinches_ him. Right in his stupidly thick bicep. “Do _not_ steal my thing.” She points her finger at him. “That is my thing, you little—”

“Everything okay back there?”

Sansa turns to find Jeyne looking at them in the rearview mirror, highly amused, and she almost curses. Almost. Instead, she uses the hand she had been pointing at Jon to rest on his leg. 

His arm finds her shoulders, and he almost smiles. She has a strange feeling that has to do with just how irritated she is with him at the moment. “Just asking when I get the full tour.” 

“Sansa will have to show you around when you get settled.” Her mother speaks up. Again, she sounds just barely amicable. “It might not seem like much, but it’s home.”

“I think it’s beautiful.” 

He would say something like that. Of course a small town in the middle of what is typically referred to as a frozen wasteland is something he considers beautiful. She bites back a scoff.

Town Proper disappears behind them sometime later, and the drive up to the house is about half an hour. It’s managed in silence, with the radio being the only one given the permission to speak. They’re watched the entire time. Either it’s her mother looking at them with her lips pursed, or it’s Jeyne, whose eyes have only gotten a little less wide since they left the airport. So Sansa has no choice but to stay underneath his arm. She wants to be uncomfortable, but his arm is heavy and warm, and she’s been up since 4 in the morning. Embarrassingly enough, she has no trouble falling asleep. She wakes up at the end of the ride to a car door slamming. Her cheek is on her shoulder, and she moves away so fast she almost gets a crick in her neck. 

Luckily, there’s no one else in the car. No one but Jon. Her mother and Jeyne are pulling their luggage out of the trunk and he’s staring at her very strangely, and he does so for a long time. 

“You drool in your sleep.” He says finally. “Like a lot.”

Sansa balls up her fist and punches him in the abdomen, and he doesn’t even flinch. Even worse, he snorts, and she all but throws herself out of the car, just barely catching herself in time so she doesn’t slam the door.

They’re parked a considerable distance from the driveway, but that’s only because there are cars everywhere. Like—everywhere. They’d have to wind their way through them just to get to the house.

“What’s going on?” Sansa asks her mother.

Her mother shuts the trunk, facing her. “People heard you were coming back and wanted to welcome you.”

She had figured as much, but hearing it confirmed makes her stomach churn. Sansa tries not to squeak, “What?”

Her mother puts her hands on her hips, eyebrows lifted challengingly. “Well, if I’d known he was coming with you, I would have been able to make an excuse, Sansa.”

The car door shuts. Jon is rounding it to take the remaining luggage Jeyne had left behind: their suitcases.

“It’s fine.” He says. “You shouldn’t have to change your plans for me.”

Her mother isn’t impressed in the slightest. 

When he begins to make his way through the makeshift parking lot that the driveway of her childhood home had been made into, only _then_ does her mother speak candidly for the first time since they got off the plane. He’s far enough away for her to speak normally, but she still whispers it, and she whispers furiously. 

“You mentioned a boyfriend.” Her mother points an accusing finger at her. “That is not a boy.”

Oh, God. 

“Mom—” Sansa starts, face feeling like it’s on fire, but her mother is already holding up her hand, and immediately, she zips it.

“We’re having a conversation about this. Later.” She says coolly. “Everyone is waiting for you. Let’s go.”

She follows her mother up to the house, half irritated for being treated like a child, and half wanting to disappear into the forest that surrounds them completely at the thought of the conversation they’d have later tonight.

Her mother is very used to getting her way. The only time she hadn’t in recent memory was when Sansa left Winterfell with Joffrey, and that left her estranged from her family for a whole three years. Now, she’s bringing home another boy—a man, as her mother so acidly pointed out—that her mother doesn’t approve of. One that she went behind her back and married. Who knows how she’s gonna react to that?

She’ll find out soon enough. 

* * *

The entire thing is just barely tolerable. 

Just. Barely. 

She’s still not sure how she made it through those first few painful minutes. The realization and the collective exclamation. Everyone bombarding them—him, actually. It’s her welcome back party, but he’s become the star. She’s suddenly 16 again, and it’s her birthday, but that doesn’t matter as much as Jon Snow does.

Truthfully, she doesn’t mind it this time. It makes people leave her the hell alone, and gives her time to think about her next move. Or it would have, if the three people who _never_ left her alone weren’t determined on keeping up the tradition.

“Would it be weird to ask him to wrestle?” Rickon asks her.

Sansa stares at him, contemplating slipping a valium into his drink and locking him in a closet because she knows he’s deadly serious. 

“Yes.” She says, very slowly, so it can’t be misconstrued. “It’d be weird.”

He doesn’t look like he likes this answer. He sips at his ginger ale thoughtfully, still staring. “He looks like he could break me.”

Her brow creases. “And that appeals to you, _why_?” 

“Robb’s gonna marry him.” Arya puts in. “He’s gonna dump Jeyne and then Jon’s gonna dump you and they’re gonna start making out.”

Right now, it certainly looks that way. Jon and Robb are developing quite the bromance. Him and her father have been attached to Jon since he walked through the door. All three of them are the best of friends, really. Laughing with each other and talking like they’ve always known each other, as they’re frequently interrupted by someone wanting to introduce themselves to Jon. 

“You’d love that, wouldn’t you?” Jeyne has somehow materialized at her side, something she manages to do every single time Arya starts talking shit about her. 

“I would.” She says almost sweetly. “The You not marrying my brother anymore part, specifically. Not the gay part.” Then she pauses. “Not that I hate gay people.”

“No. You despise all men equally.” Bran says, taking a pull from his beer. “It’s one of your most attractive qualities.”

“Thank you.” Arya actually sounds seriously touched. 

“I need a drink.” Jeyne says, snatching Bran’s beer out of his hand. Then she grabs Sansa by the arm. “And you need to spill.”

Knowing there’s no chance of avoiding this conversation any longer, Sansa sighs, allowing Jeyne to drag her down one of the many hallways winding through the lodge house, and into a spare bedroom. She’s searching for something to say as Jeyne locks the door, something convincing, when she’s pounced on with the last words that she expects. Jeyne all but shouts them.

“Jon Snow is _Mr. Big_?”

For a moment, all she can do is gape. “How’d you—”

“He said you guys met while you were working for him!” Jeyme is steadily starting to sound more hysterical. “That he was your boss and you were his _assistant._ How long were you gonna keep this from me?”

Sansa knew they were gonna have to answer questions about their relationship eventually, but not this soon. Jon’s presence, physical or on the television, tended to make everything else fade into the background in this household. She had thought that this would be one of those times. Even with her being the one who brought him home, she thought him being there period would take precedence over the logistics. Either she had seriously underestimated her family’s interest in her or Jon’s ability to run his mouth.

“I signed an NDA.” She says defensively. “It wasn’t like I—”

“You know what? We’ll get back to that.” Jeyne cuts her off. “Put it on hold. I’m honestly more focused on the fact that you have spent the last two years describing him as the boss from hell only to bring him _here._ As your boyfriend!”

Boyfriend. Sansa squirms underneath the name but she doesn’t deny it. She can’t afford to right now. “It just happened.” She says instead, a little weakly.

“Apparently!” Jeyne throws her hands up in the air. “When I said _fuck him,_ I didn’t mean literally!” 

The implication that they had sex is too much to bear, yet it’s another thing she couldn’t deny. She rubs at her temples, trying to see a way out of this conversation without just telling her every single thing. 

“Was it that good? For you to bring him to my wedding and forget what a major dick he’s been to you?”

“He’s not exactly Satan.” Sansa forces out. There was a time she believed that, before what happened with Tyrion.

“He is!” Jeyne exclaims. “If Satan were sexy and of average height!”

“Jeynie.” She grabs her hands and squeezes. “Just be nice to him? Please?” 

Jeyne’s nostrils flare as she exhales, but she doesn’t let go of her hand. “You really like him?”

She hates his guts, actually, but telling her that would only give her the go ahead. So she just squeezes her hand again imploringly.

“Fine. I guess I’ll have to make peace with the devil incarnate.”

“Thank you.”

Jeyne squeezes her hand back, then gives a sly smile. “But I can’t say the same for your mom.”

And it hits her.

If Jeyne knows he’s her boss, then the rest of her family does too, including her mother. Meaning her mother finally has someone to hold responsible for her absence at Christmas. Someone who is in the same room as her. Someone who hockey player or not, is gonna get a piece of her mind.

“Shit.” She swallows, and immediately runs out of the room. 

She’s too late, though. She understands that when she finds them together. All of them, Jon and her parents and her brothers and sisters. But Jon isn’t talking to her mother, he’s talking to someone familiar: lean and wiry, with light brown curls she used to daydream about a lifetime ago. She should be focused on the fact that literally everyone is staring at her, but she’s too stunned to see him.

“Willas?” 

He grins at her, that warm, sheepish grin that used to send her heart falling down several flights of stairs, but it’s somehow different. Somehow wrong. He opens her mouth, maybe to greet her, but he’s interrupted. Jon is standing in front of her now, blocking him from view. His hand is on her elbow and for some reason, he looks like he’s trying his best not to wince as he tries to talk to her, and that’s how she knows that he messed up. Sansa barely has time to brace herself, because her mother’s voice is cutting clear through the air. 

“You got _married_ without telling us?”

  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! Happy Valentine’s day!

Reflecting back on it, the entire conversation could have gone a lot worse. 

Sansa stands in the shower for a lot longer than she should, until her fingers prune, thinking about it all, agonizing over every detail. That’s the kind of person she is. The person who can’t help but remember every single embarrassing moment of her life in 4K ultra with bonus commentary. 

It isn’t even the conversation itself that has her wincing to herself. That had been fine. Okay, not fine—excruciating was more like it—but it was tolerable. The raised voices she could take. The constant barrage of questions, she had weathered with considerable dignity. The repetition, mainly of the words ‘ _I just don’t understand,’_ she could take in stride.

The accusatory tone is where she drew the line in the sand. 

And not just with her finger, either. But with a big bleach white piece of chalk and with _flourish,_ thank you very much. The fourth _‘I just don’t understand’_ had barely left her mother’s mouth when Sansa came volleying back with three words of her own: my sixteenth birthday. 

She never pulled the card very often—at all, really—but she knew that the only way she was getting out of this was some serious guilt tripping and she knew it worked the moment her mother burst into tears. 

God, she really is a terrible person. 

That wasn’t the _goal_ by any means. She never reacted that way before. She knew how much her mother agonized to this day over forgetting it. No one held a grudge better than her, especially against herself. Sansa hates herself for bringing it up, but she’s only a little sorry. They had no right to be mad at her for going behind their back, and she had to remind them of that.

She tells herself this a couple more times before turning off the water and drying herself off. It helps ease the churn of her stomach. Then she opens up her toiletry bag to retrieve her face cream and she thinks of Jeyne’s skin at the airport, which leads her to think about Jeyne, and her stomach churns all over again. She stormed out of the house shortly after the announcement. 

The whole sixteenth birthday excuse wouldn’t work on her. Jeyne had been the only one who _hadn’t_ forgot her birthday, even though she was in Seattle visiting family. She even baked her cupcakes and gave them to her the day before she left. They never forgot each other’s birthdays, and they sure as hell didn’t keep secrets or lie to each other.

Until now, at least.

Because Jeyne knew how much of her adolescent years she spent hating Jon Snow, and had also dutifully listened to her complain about Mr. Big. Because she spent five minutes lying to her before the news broke downstairs. And now, as consequence of that news, Jeyne’s wedding is being upstaged by her best friend’s honeymoon.

To say she had a lot of groveling to do would be an understatement.

Sansa runs through her options, as she goes through the motions of her nightly routine. She considers them clinically and reasonably, ignoring the panic starting to well up inside of her. She told her parents her and Jon had been seeing each other for six months. That didn’t line up with the one night stand timeline she gave Jeyne. Or rather the timeline Jeyne provided and she went along with. If Sansa told her she’d actually been seeing him for the last six months, she’d be beyond pissed, because that would mean she was lying to her this whole time. And to top it off—she’s _still_ lying.

But she doesn’t have to.

That’s the second option, the only option. Tell the truth. She has no idea what Jeyne’s reaction would be, and that is almost enough to scare her away from the idea entirely. Almost. The prospect of lying even more is making her so queasy she pauses moisturizing her face. She should sleep on it. 

Just thinking of sleeping makes her eyelids feel like they weigh a thousand pounds. Sansa rubs them between pulling on her pajamas, opening the door. She quickly closes it so that only her eye is visible through a sliver of a crack. That doesn’t matter, though. 

He isn’t looking at her.

“What are you doing?”

Jon looks over his shoulder from her desk, arms lowering. There’s a soft thud of something being replaced. “I was just looking.”

That’s when she realizes this is the first conversation they’ve had since they entered the house. From when he brought their luggage inside and everyone swarmed them to that ill fated moment her parents found out they were married. Found out from _him._

Maybe if they had talked, they wouldn’t be in this mess.

Sansa wants nothing more than to ignore him in this moment, but the shock of seeing him in her childhood bedroom—the same bedroom she had once hung up a poster of him to throw darts at—jars her so much she forgets herself. She remembers herself now, and the fact that she loathes him. And that despite this, he is her husband. And that she’s gonna have to sleep in the same bed with him. 

  
“Can you close your eyes?” She mumbles, thankful that the door is covering her blush. But not for long.

“Yeah.” Jon says, almost too fast. “Sure.” He does her one better, and turns around too.

Sansa doesn’t waste any time. She shuts the bathroom door behind her and scurries towards the bed, yanking the covers over her body, all the way up to her chin, so that her silk pajamas aren’t even a little visible. From here, she can see exactly what Jon was looking at on her desk: a photo from her first disneyland trip. She had the mouse ears to prove it, and her mouth was red from processed sugar. She had several teeth missing.

“You can open your eyes now.” She says, maybe a little too coldly, only to offset the warmth in her cheeks.

Jon does just that, turning back around. She notices his ears look a little red, and while it should have made her feel better that he could experience human emotions like embarrassment, it doesn’t make her feel anything at all.

Sansa shifts to her side so she doesn’t have to look at him. “There’s still hot water. You should get in while it lasts.”

“Alright.” 

She realizes, after he disappears into the bathroom after gathering his things, that there is still at least one thing she likes about Jon: his efficiency. He doesn’t waste any time getting in, but that also means he doesn’t waste any time _staying_ in. 

Sansa wants to be asleep before he comes out. She doesn’t want to talk to him. When she stormed upstairs after blowing up on her parents, she’d been storming away from him too, leaving him to clean up her mess for once. She wonders if he apologized for her like she had apologized for him so many times. It would serve him right. 

Unfortunately her eyes don’t cooperate, and when the door to her bathroom opens close to 15 minutes later, she’s only pretending to be asleep, back turned towards him.

She’s so focused on making her breaths low and even, on keeping her body perfectly still, she doesn’t even notice the tugging sensation on the other side of the bed until it’s too late. She’s so curious, she drops her laborious fake sleeping act to look over her shoulder. 

“What are you doing?”

Jon looks over at her. His hair is damp and extra curly as a result, pushed back from his face so that she can see his expression clearly in all it’s nonplussed glory. “Getting ready for bed.”

He’s already got a good start. There’s a pillow on the floor and a blanket she hadn’t realized he brought from home on the ground. A part of her, a very large part, wants to turn back around and leave him to his own devices. She has the bed to herself, and she doesn’t want to sleep with him anyway. But the part of her, the one that _still_ unfortunately cares about him; that’s larger.

“You’re not sleeping down there.” Sansa says. “You’re gonna hurt your back. You can’t afford that with preseason coming up. Just get up here.”

He still doesn’t, though. Just stands there, one of her pillows in his hands. His ears are red again, she notices. “I don’t want—”

He doesn’t want to sleep with _her._ That stung. After everything, he could still find a way to her. She ignores it, just like she ignores the rest of his sentence, cutting it off. “Then I’ll sleep on the floor. But you need to take the bed—”

“I don’t want you to sleep on the floor.” The words come out so fast, she wouldn’t have been surprised if they ran into each other. “Unless you want to.” Jon adds. He isn’t quite looking at her. “I just don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

Sansa was able to ignore the fact that she was until he brought it up. Now, she turns back over on her side again so he can’t see her blush. “We’re both adults.”

She doesn’t think he’ll listen, because a moment passes where he doesn’t move at all and she forces herself not to care. If he wants to mess up his back, then that’s his prerogative. But then there’s more rustling and the feeling of the bed lowering underneath his weight, and he’s here. With her. She’s reminded once again that it’s their wedding night.

And that everyone _knows_ it’s their wedding night.

Sansa moves a little further away from him, jaw tight. 

She hears him sigh, and feels it, too. “Will you just say something, already?” 

She doesn’t.

“Anything. Yell at me, bitch me out, something—”

She bolts straight up. “ _Bitch_ you out?” 

“That came out wrong.” Jon admits, and scrubs at his face. “I just mean—do whatever it takes for you not to be pissed at me anymore.”

What a strange way to frame _forgiveness._ That’s what he’s asking for, in a roundabout way. Forgiveness. Which is funny considering he didn’t even get it the last time he asked for it. Sansa scoffs. 

“It just slipped out.”

“I’m sorry if I have a hard time believing that, considering you say less than maybe 500 words a day.” She explodes, mindful to keep her voice from getting louder than a harsh whisper. 

Even today, when he was being positively chatty compared to normal, he probably hadn’t even capped it off at a thousand. But apparently, that’s just enough to do some damage, because now the entire town knows they’re married thanks to him and his big mouth.

Curiously enough, Jon doesn’t say anything to that. 

So Sansa just throws up her hands instead of wrapping them around his neck and slams back down onto her a pillow a little harder than necessary. She turns away from him for the third time, and is determined to stay that way.

“It was that guy.” She hears him say finally, after she already closed her eyes. “William.”

Sansa _almost_ turns around again, just barely stopping herself. “Willas?”

“Whatever his name is.” Jon mutters, a little too gruffly.

“ _Willas Tyrell_ provoked you?”

Rather than answer that directly, he says, “He has feelings for you.”

It’s like a cold splash of water to the face, and she’s thankful for it. Thankful for the absurdity of the question because _now_ she can look at his face. She can look at his face, and laugh in it. That’s exactly what she does. She turns around again, god forgive her.

“You’re not serious?” 

Jon looks the furthest from being amused. It’s his turn to be irritated. “I don’t see what’s funny.” 

Her mouth almost drops open. 

He _is_ being serious.

“Willas used to get paid to sit with me at the kitchen table and help me with my geometry homework.” She says blankly. “He knows I’m a total moron. He doesn’t have a _crush_ on me.”

Like everything else she says, it goes through one ear and out the other. Actually—she doesn’t even think it goes inside of his head. It just bounces off his temple like a rubber ball. “You didn’t hear the way he was talking about you.” 

“So you told him.” She folds her arms over her chest. “You told him we were married, and that’s how everyone found out.”

Jon shifts, almost like he’s uncomfortable. “I didn’t tell him exactly.”

She laughs mirthlessly. “First it slipped out, then you didn’t tell him. Which one is it?” 

His eyes narrow, and she knows that he’s not exactly fond of her tone at that moment. She couldn’t care less. He should just be happy he isn’t getting a face full of pillow. 

But then he’s leaning forward. The bed is big enough that he’s not so close yet but her toes are curling and she’s very glad her legs aren’t visible. She can separate his iris from his pupil, he’s so close.

“I warned him.” He says finally.

She swallows. And then it takes everything inside of her not to do it again because her throat feels so dry. “What does that mean?”

“It means I told him that if he touched my wife, I’d break his jaw.” 

My wife. Her palms bunch up her silk pajama pants underneath. _My wife_ . She thinks back to the kiss at the chapel, his hand on the back of her head. _My wife._ Her knees knock together as she closes her legs. _My wife my wife my wife—_

Sansa pulls the covers up to her chin, turning her back on him once again. She doesn’t allow herself to speak until her eyes are on her flowery wallpaper, and not him. “You’re ridiculous.” 

Jon ignores that. “You like him.”

Her cheeks flush, as she grits her teeth. “I don’t wanna talk to you anymore.”

“At least you did.” He continues as if she hadn’t spoken. “I saw the way you looked at him.”

Sansa pushes herself up on her elbows. “It’s gonna be hard enough to pretend with you tomorrow as it is. Please don’t make it worse by pissing me off.” She claps her hands so that the lights turn off, slams back onto her pillow, pulling the covers over her head.

She doesn’t expect him to actually listen, but he does. No snide comment, no remark under his breath. He doesn’t even move. She doesn’t think she even hears him breathe. 

“I don’t look at him in any way.” She says defensively, unable to stand the quiet.

More silence. Somehow accusing and distrustful silence, at that. 

“Fine.” Sansa throws the covers off her head with a sigh. “Yes, I had a crush on him. But it was a long time ago. Obviously I’ve moved on.”

She thinks she sees his shoulders move in the dark, but she can’t be sure.

“I’m not gonna...cheat on you if that’s what you’re worried about. I wouldn’t jeopardize this for you. Just because it isn’t real doesn’t mean I’d do that. I made vows.”

She turns to face the wall, so that she isn’t left searching for a reaction from him. Some small bit of acknowledgment. She’s spent the last two years doing that. She’s not doing it anymore. He could believe her or not believe her. That’s his decision.

But for some reason, she really wants him to. 

“I trust you.” Jon says after a while. 

“It doesn’t feel like it.” The pressure in her chest is still there, and she’s felt this sensation around him enough to know exactly what it is: hurt. She ignores it for something steadier, less vulnerable: irritation. “You know, if Daenerys or Val magically appeared in Winterfell—”

“So you’re saying you consider Willas an ex?” 

“I’m _saying_ that it shouldn’t matter. If our situations were reversed, I’d trust you to be around them.” She says. “That’s what married people do. They trust each other.” 

“I already told you I trust you.” He says, voice a little softer than when he originally said it.

She doesn’t want to believe him, but her chest starts to lighten all the same. There’s always gonna be a part of her, a rather large part, that can’t help but trust him, no matter how bruised the rest of her is. Will it make the next five years easier or harder? She tries not to think about it as she struggles to put the conversation behind her and sleep. 

“If Dany and Val showed up in Winterfell, or Long Island, or anywhere—I’d tell them to go to hell.”

She opens her eyes. She’d been halfway to sleep without realizing it, now his words have her awake again.

“Charming.” Sansa says drowsily. She waits for a reply, but it doesn’t come. Her eyes shut again.

“I made vows too.” He says so quietly, she assumes she imagined them. She doesn’t open her eyes again.

* * *

He’s gone when she wakes up.

Her first reaction? _Thank God._

She’s a cuddler. A serial sleep cuddler. Or at least she had been in the past. It wasn’t out of the normal for to wake up with her cheek pressed against Jeyne’s back, or her arms wrapped around her pillow in a constrictor grip. She had grown out of it since moving thanks to Joffrey, he hated it, but she had been sleeping alone this entire time. Give her a body of warmth in the same bed as her, and there’s no telling what would happen. The last thing she wants to do is hear Jon talk about how she drools, snores, _and_ tries to cuddle him. No freaking thanks. So when she realizes she’s gone, she’s relieved. At first. 

Then she starts to freak out.

She stumbles out of the bed so fast, she trips over her own feet, nearly falling. The memory of what happened last night hits her full force. He can’t be trusted to wander around the house alone if he’s gonna run his mouth like that. And even if he hadn’t, there’s still the fact that he is Jon Snow, and he’s alone in _her_ house. The same house that had acted as a temple for his Direwolves jersey just over half a decade before. 

She can’t afford to panic.

But she’s also not gonna waste anymore time. She exchanges her pajamas for a sundress because it’s one of her only outfits that takes the least effort and she brushes her teeth so fast and hard her gums start bleeding. No makeup. There’s no time. When she jogs downstairs, her legs are still wobbly from lack of use. She doesn’t really know where she should look first and that thought honestly scares her even more. But there’s noise coming from the kitchen that sounds a lot like arguing and she hopes to god Jon isn’t the source. 

He isn’t. Arya, Bran, Rickon, and are sitting at the table eating and her mom and Jeyne are at the stove cooking. Sansa immediately steps back, mostly because she isn’t ready to see Jeyne as she hasn’t made her decision yet, but her mother’s voice stops her. 

“I was starting to think you’d never wake up.”

She resists the urge to wince. A year at home somehow made her forget that her mother never needed to see her to know she was there. Everyone turns to look at her, even Jeyne. But upon realizing who it is, she turns back to the stove almost immediately, as if she hadn’t even come in in the first place. Sansa tries to pretend like that doesn’t hurt, taking her seat at the table. 

“Sorry.” She mumbles. “Jet lag.”

“Jon is probably more used to traveling.” Rickon says matter of factly to the rest of them, like he was an expert on all things Jon Snow. 

She opens her mouth to ask where he is, but Arya cuts her off. “He went running with Dad and Robb.”

“Running?” Sansa repeats in disbelief, then, in her head, a little more irritably. _Running._ She makes sure to keep her eyes from rolling up the ceiling. 

“They should be coming back now.” Her mother sets a plate down in front of her, tucking her hair behind her ear. “There you go. We have that syrup you like.”

She tries to ignore the pointed cheerfulness of her mother’s tone. It’s the _My-16th-Birthday_ calling card effect. Sansa had only brought it up one time and embarrassingly enough it was when her parents were dead set against her going to a 1D concert all the way in Seattle. She regretted it as soon as she said it—because her mother suddenly looked a hundred years old in that moment. But she got to go to the concert, and she got anything else she wanted for a solid month straight afterward. Hopefully, that would apply to this situation and her mom would play nice with Jon for the rest of the week. 

_Hopefully._ Jeez, being Mrs. Snow has turned her into a real bitch. 

“I heard your husband threatened to punch Willas’ lights out.” Arya says, mouth still full. 

To her effort, she doesn’t cringe. In fact, she keeps her face blank. Plausible deniability seems the best way to go in this situation. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Because she heard wrong.” Bran puts in. “He said he would punch his teeth out, not his eyes.”

“I heard kneecaps.” Rickon adds. 

“You can’t punch kneecaps, dumbass.” Arya rolls her eyes. 

“Who wants more whipped cream?” Their mother breaks in, her stiff, blinding smile a warning to change the subject. Thankfully, they all do as they are subtly told, even if the silence isn’t that convincing. 

That’s the moment Jeyne takes her seat at the table. Sansa thinks she sees her mouth twitching, but she successfully covers it up with her orange juice. If they were talking at the moment, she’d probably call Jon caveman. And then, Sansa would point out that if it were any other guy who had done it, she would have called him sexy. Then Jeyne would probably say, “A sexy caveman.” And they would laugh really hard.

But they aren’t talking. 

“I was thinking…” Sansa picks up her fork to give herself something to do so she doesn’t look like she’s been rehearsing this in her head for the last three minutes, which she definitely has. She can’t take this awkwardness between them anymore. She’s ready to start her grovelling. “Since I’m home, I can finally get started on my maid of honor duties today.”

The silence continues. Jeyne picks up her orange juice again, takes a sip, and sets it back down. “Matron.”

Sansa furrows her brow. “What?”

“Matron.” Jeyne repeats rather crisply. “You’re married, so you’re not a maid.”

It’s casual, cool enough to sound indifferent, and that’s exactly why it stings. She doesn’t _get_ indifferent from Jeyne. Not her. But all she can think of to say is, “Oh.”

“My mother made sashes for all of us. She’ll have to start over.”

“I can help—”

“You have an appointment with the seamstress.” Jeyne cuts her off. “You missed it yesterday. Chataya doesn’t like to reschedule, but she made an exception, since it was your wedding night at all.”

The more she mentions the wedding, the more real the whole thing is. The further from Las Vegas they got on the plane ride here, the more it seemed like a fever dream. But now, Sansa is more aware than ever that isn’t. She’s facing the consequences. 

“That’s nice of her.” Sansa clears her throat, forcing a smile. “I’ll make sure to get down there today, then.”

Jeyne smiles back. “That’s what I just said.”

“I was agreeing with you, Jeyne.”

“I guess that’s better than you lying to me.”

Bran winces into his eggs, while Arya looks to be delighted, head moving back and forth between them as if she’s watching a tennis match. Rickon is trying to stuff a pancake the size of his face into his mouth all at once. Sansa very desperately wishes she was that pancake, quickly disappearing from view thanks to being scarfed down, never to be seen or perceived again. 

Being a pancake sounds really nice, right about now.

“Who wants sausage?” Her mother breaks in, feigning blissful ignorance.

Somewhere in the house, the lock to the front door turns loose, and Greywind’s barks are the first to cross the threshold, footsteps and amiable chatter following behind them. He enters the kitchen with quite the spring in his step for a dog who just went on a run, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. When he stops at the stove and sits, the perfect picture of an obedient pet, only then does Catelyn relent, and feed him two sausage links.

The rest of them come in only seconds later. First her father, looking noticeably stiff with his hands on his hips, and Robb and Jon, talking they knew each other for years. The most horrifying thought occurs to her in that moment; that they might be talking about her, and she wants to throw up.

“You’re limping.” Her mother says, arms circling around her father’s waist.

“I’m alright.” He assures her. Limping though he may be, he still manages to smile at her, that tiny little grin he reserves just for her. Then he kisses her lightly. “I just tripped. I feel silly.”

“You’re not silly.” Jon says immediately.

“Just clumsy.” Robb grins.

Jon nudges him and Robb laughs and Sansa doesn’t like that at all. Not one bit. What could they possibly have to bond over? Hockey? That was literally the only thing they have in common. And hunting. And mudding. And abnormally large dogs. And slightly misogynistic tendencies. And—

Maybe Arya was onto something yesterday. They really _are_ made for each other.

“Hi.” Robb approaches Jeyne from behind, face in her neck.

Her nose scrunches. “You’re all sweaty.”

Undeterred, he tugs on her scrunchie, tipping her head back to kiss her. Despite her complaints, she doesn’t resist at all, her hands lacing through his damp hair. They kiss so long it’s a miracle there’s no tongue involved.

Arya protests indignantly, while Bran dramatically covers Rickon’s eyes with his hand. Sansa wishes she could laugh at them like her parents, but she’s more than aware of the fact that Jon is standing just behind her. She thinks of her parent’s chaste kiss and Robb and Jeyne’s barely safe for work one, and her face feels impossibly hot, as she wonders if they’re expected to do the same.

Jon doesn’t look even vaguely panicked, which is annoying. Everything about him this morning is annoying, actually. He’s wearing _those_ sweatpants, the gray ones she bought him because they didn’t have any more black in his size. Instead of baggy, they’re fitting in all the right places, almost distractingly so; which is exactly why whenever he was supposed to be traveling, she never packed them. And the shirt he’s wearing—she wouldn’t have packed that shirt, either. It’s _white._ Where does he get off thinking after almost 36 nearly uninterrupted years of black, he can wear white? Is it a laundry day or something? It’s jarring, especially with the light natural tan he always seems to pick up around the summertime that’s actually insufferable. That’s exactly what it is. Insufferable. She’s actually never loathed him more than she does at this moment, and he’s just draining his water bottle, as if it’s nothing to him at all. 

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and meets her eyes, having finally deigned her worthy of attention. “Hello.”

“Hey.” Her own swallowing sounds too loud in her ears. 

Jon considers her for a moment, one that passes too quickly to prepare herself for his next move: his lips on her forehead, cold and soft. They’re there, and then they’re gone.

And she’s stupid again.

It lasted less than five seconds and here she is, head empty, tingling from the kiss. The skin on her forehead actually feels like it’s been tattooed with the imprint of his mouth. She’s gonna walk around for the rest of her days with his mouth on her forehead. In her peripheral, she catches her family not so subtly watching them and it brings her back to the here and now. This is supposed to be commonplace between them. They’re supposed to be married. Married people are affectionate. 

With that in mind, she forces a smile, willing her stupid to fade as she takes his hand. “How was your run?” 

“It was good.” His other hand finds her shoulder.

“He said he couldn’t sleep.” Robb puts in with a grin. “Figured we’d tire him out some.”

“It happens to the best of us when we’re in new places. It’s the unfamiliarity.” Her mother says. “Sansa, you’re showing him around today, right? After your fitting?”

Her disposition is considerably warmer to him than it was yesterday and Sansa knows this is probably courtesy of the my-16th-birthday effect, but she has no time to really reflect on it because Jon’s hand has moved from her shoulder to her hair. As in he’s just holding her ponytail in his hand, and she starts to feel strangely lightheaded. Definitely nearing stupid territory again. 

“I’d love to, but I’m already so behind on planning the bachelorette party.” She says, trying to sound apologetic and not like she’d rather swallow nails than act as his tour guide. 

“I can do it.” Rickon offers quickly.

“If you do it, all he’s gonna see is the hockey rink.” Ned says dryly.

“Then I’ll do it!” Arya and Bran say at the same time.

“He doesn’t even like you guys.” Robb says. “It should be me.”

They all begin to bicker about who should get to show Jon around, and Sansa realizes that there is no win here. She’d rather drink bleach than leave Jon alone with any of her siblings. 

“I’ll do it. I’ll make time when I get back from the fitting.” She cuts them all off, turns to look up at Jon. “How’s that sound, muffin?”

She’s squeezing his hand as hard as she’s capable of squeezing it. She’s trying to tell him this isn’t up for debate. In a perfect world, she’d be able to shake him and tell him, _If you think I’m letting you out of my sight again motherfucker, you’re wrong._

His mouth tightens at the corners—God, what did muffins ever do to _him?_ —before he releases her ponytail and squeezes her hand back. “Sure thing, pumpkin.”

_Pumpkin?_

Oh this motherfucker—

“I’m just glad to be a part of it all.” He says, looking genuine.

“We’re glad to have you, man. Seriously.” Robb says enthusiastically, kissing Jeyne’s temple. “Aren’t we?”

Jeyne, having been temporarily mollified in Robb’s arms doesn’t look mollified in that moment. She must not have the energy to be condescending, because she settles for a cool, “Of course.”

  
  


* * *

Sansa is perfectly capable of driving herself, but her mother offers to take her into town for the fitting. She feels so guilty about last night that she allows it to happen. If she wants to feel helpful, she isn’t gonna stop her. It’s the least she can do. 

“You look beautiful.” Catelyn says, as she watches her in the mirror. 

The dress is simple but elegant, a flowy baby blue a-line with a sweetheart neckline. Thin straps. Sansa was supposed to help her pick them out, but she was so busy with work she just told her to pick out whatever she wanted and that she’d love it. Even when she brushed her off, Jeyne still picked her one of her favorite colors. 

“Yeah.” She says, throat burning with guilt. “It’s nice.”

The only adjustments that need to be made are the skirt, simply because she doesn’t want to trip over it, and the waist, as Jeyne has more boobs than her. The dress will be ready for pick up on Wednesday. As she gets undressed, Sansa can’t help but remind herself it would have been ready earlier if she had been there when she was supposed to be. Just another way she’s failed Jeyne.

Instead of going home immediately, her mother stops at the cafe that makes the grilled cheese she likes. She has no idea if it's because she senses how horrible she feels or if it’s simply a part of the my-16th-birthday effect but she’s thankful either way, and hugs her so tightly in the car that she laughs in surprise. 

They take their food to go eat by the beach like they always do. The breeze ruffles her air, rising goosebumps on her arms and legs. She had forgotten that Long Island summer weather was much different than Winterfell weather. She would have gone upstairs to get her cardigan before leaving, but that would mean following Jon upstairs. He had been taking a shower at the time, and she didn’t want to chance a conversation with him. She hadn’t even grabbed her purse before she left.

“Me and your father talked last night.” Her mother says, breaking the amiable silence between them. “And we understand your decision. We really do.”

Sansa bites back a grimace. Whenever her mother said _really,_ she was only substituting the word for ‘but’, validating her victim’s feelings before she went in for the kill.

“It’s just…” Catelyn hesitates. “We always talked about that moment together.”

And there it is.

“It was our thing, you know? And I liked that. I don’t have a clue if Arya will ever get married, but I was always okay with that because at least we had you.” 

Oh, she’s laying it on thick, _my-sixteenth-birthday_ card be damned. Sansa wants to shrink into herself like a tortoise with a shell, but instead she only restricts herself to a grimace. “I know, mom.”

And to her horror, her mother actually begins to sniffle.

_Not again._

“It was my dream. Your father’s too. He’s devastated he didn’t get to give you away. He won’t say it, you know how he is, but—he is. Not that we don’t understand why you did it honey, but it really hurt us.”

And what is she supposed to say to that? She knows that, she really does. She hates that she hurt them. But if she had to do it all over again, she wouldn’t change a thing. And she suspects that isn’t something her mom wants to hear. 

Catelyn straightens up, grabbing her hands and smiling tentatively. “That’s why...I was thinking...both me and your father—that you guys could have a proper ceremony here.”

“Mom—”

“You could have a proper dress, and a proper party.” She rushes on. “Not even a party. Just a gathering. You would only have to invite who you wanted to. We wouldn’t make it a big thing. I promise.”

“Mom, Robb and Jeyne are getting married.” Sansa withdraws her hands from her. “That’s what you need to focus on.”

“We’d still be focusing on them. I’m not talking about having the ceremony this summer—just whenever you guys are ready. If that’s a month from now, or even nine, we’ll just be happy to be a part of it.” 

That last part.

That’s what gets her. 

Her parents are never ones to go back on their word. If they said it would only be a small gathering, then it would only be a small gathering. If they said she could choose the guests, they would let her choose the guests. If they said she could plan to have the ceremony whenever they wanted, without interfering with Robb and Jeyne’s wedding, then they meant that too.

And besides, if she’s setting the time table, then she could prolong it as long as she wanted. She could push it back so far that by the time the ceremony was going to take place, they’d be divorced already. 

She could make this work. She had to.

“That sounds good, Mom.” She says finally, forcing a smile.

Catelyn actually squeals and throws her arms around her. All Sansa can do is hug her back just as tightly, and pray she knows what she’s doing. 

* * *

Jon is playing video games with Rickon, Bran, and Arya when she gets back. As soon as she enters the room, Jon pauses the game and hands off his controller to Bran. 

“Oh come on! It was just about to be my turn.” Arya complains.

“I’ll play you when I get back.” Jon ruffles her hair as he stands up, and she only bats his hand away from her half heartedly. 

“Do you have to go?” Bran asks. 

Sansa is honestly wondering the same thing when Rickon opens his mouth to say, “Can we come?”

She could have picked him up like she did when he was small and spun him around, kissing him. 

“Why not?” She replies for him. “Let’s go.” 

The three of them cheer victoriously, elbowing each other to get out of the door first, leaving Sansa alone with Jon for the first time all day. And thanks to the idea Rickon gave her, the last time for a while. 

Jon opens his mouth, as if to speak, but she cuts him off quickly, already leaving the way her siblings came. “You coming, or what?”

He has no choice but to follow her, although he does it a little sullenly. Sansa wishes one of her siblings had taken the front seat so she didn’t have to sit with him, but apparently, they’ve crossed enough boundaries today and have decided to err on the side of politeness. She notices that Jon gets into the car a little stiffly, and she wants nothing more than to remind him that she’s the one that’s supposed to be mad here, not him. 

It’s Rickon, Bran, and Arya who do the tour guiding. She’s too busy being irritated to add anything of value. They show him the gear shop and the grocery store and the post office. Sansa doesn’t know if Jon is actually paying attention to any of it because she’s made the decision not to pay attention to him.

“Is that a rink?”

She doesn’t bother hiding her eye roll that time. Of course he’d notice that. 

“Yeah, but there’s a bigger one downtown.” Bran informs him. 

“Which one do you guys own?” Jon asks. 

Arya grins at that. “Both.”

After a lot of prodding and poking from Rickon and Arya, Sansa ends up pulling into the rink parking lot. When her siblings pile out of the car like a couple of clowns, threatening to race each other inside, she’s already contented herself to stay in the car rather than go inside with them. 

She just doesn’t realize Jon has, too. 

“You’re still mad at me.” He says.

Sansa presses the unlock button even the doors are already unlocked, a hint that he needs to get the hell out so that she doesn’t have to tell him. “I don’t feel like having this conversation with you right now.”

Jon reaches over and locks the door back. “If it were up to you, we’d never have it.”

She clenches her jaw, but says nothing. She looks out the window, arms crossed over her chest.

“Look, I know this isn’t...ideal. You sacrificed a lot by doing this for me. I’m not blind to that.” He pauses. “You didn’t even wanna come back. And I get that. But if things stay like this between us—it’s gonna be a long five years. So I’m trying. I’m sorry for everything, but I really am trying.”

Everything. It’s such a small, measly little word, yet it’s supposed to encapsulate everything. All those years of grumpy mornings and red eyed flights. The lack of pleases and thank you’s. The Christmas she missed because she was so worried about him. His dismissal of Tyrion’s remarks about her. Everything that happened last night, which she isn’t even really mad about anymore, but still. It’s one more thing.

It’s just too much.

“You keep saying you get it, but you don’t. _Two years._ ” She emphasizes. “I spent two years with you. I helped schedule your appearances. I went to your games. I cooked you your favorite meals when you lost those games. I _cared_ for you. I cared for you so much that it probably would have been a good ten years before I realized I threw my life away running behind you—”

She has to stop herself, there’s a lump growing in her throat. She wants to swallow it down, swallow down every single word, too. But she can’t. She’s been doing it for the last two years and she’s incapable of doing it any longer. 

“And the worst part of it all is that it was _easy_. Even after years of living in your shadow and hating you—I’m talking pure loathing—even after all of that, I started to care. And you just...didn’t.”

“That’s not true.” Jon says immediately. “You’re—”

“We were never friends.” Sansa’s voice rises. “To be friends, we’d have to be equals, and we were never that, either. If we were, you would have said something to Tyrion.”

“I fired him.”

“Would you have if I never said anything?”

He doesn’t answer.

And maybe that’s because he’s been alone for so long that he expects everyone to move the way he does. To shrug off criticism. To not give a damn about what anyone else thinks about them. But does it matter? She made it clear that would never her. He knew that from the beginning.

He just didn’t care.

“You say you’re trying with me?” Sansa whispers. “Try harder.”

She slams the door shut behind her.

* * *

Her plan works for the most part. 

After they get home, she doesn’t really see Jon. Someone is always pulling him in another direction, either Bran or Rickon or Arya or Robb or even her dad—and that’s fine. More than fine, really. After their conversation in the car, she can’t quite shake the feeling that she just bared her soul to him and he is the last person that she would want to share her deepest darkest secrets with. So she avoids him. 

Until she can’t anymore. 

They get ready for bed in complete silence. Like last night, she pretends to be asleep when she gets out of the shower. She even turns off the light so that it’s more believable. Jon is forced to make his way to bed in the dark. From what she hears, he does so without incident. 

Somehow, it’s even harder to fall asleep than it was yesterday with this silence between them. She stares into the darkness, waiting for her eyelids to feel heavy, but the sensation never comes. She’s left listening to him breathe. 

“I didn’t say anything to Tyrion because I didn’t care enough to.”

She knew he wasn’t sleep; not only did he not try to pretend, but she knows the sound of his snoring, too. Still, it surprises her when he speaks. And then, once his words sink in, that surprise is replaced by a bitter taste in her mouth. 

“Thanks.” Sansa mutters.

Jon sighs. “You didn’t let me finish.”

She just barely bites back from telling him that she doesn’t have to. Begrudgingly, she remains silent.

“I didn’t care about anything he had to say when it came to you because nothing was gonna change my mind. The moment he mentioned you, the conversation was null and void to me. I wasn’t listening to any of it. I told him I wasn’t interested. I wish I said something more, but I can’t go back and change that. That’s why I fired him. So it wouldn’t happen again.” 

Had he really been so confident that she’d come back? But even when she told him she wouldn’t, he still refused to hire him back. She doesn’t know what to think about that part. 

“I care about you.” He says, almost too soft for her to hear. “You’re always giving me more help than I’m willing to take because you know I need it. You hold me accountable when everyone else is too afraid to. After the accident, you stayed with me. You helped me up when I fell. You believed in me.” He stops, and silence overtakes them once more. 

“I care about you.” He repeats. “I think the world of you. No one else knows me the way that you know me. That made me selfish with you. It won’t happen again. I’m sorry.”

Only when he stops talking does Sansa realize she stopped breathing. She has no choice but to exhale now, and it sounds shaky in her own ears. She doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t even know what to feel. She just knows—

That it’s different now.

He didn’t just give her one word like he did in the car and expected it to be enough. He gave her all of them. For the first time since they met, he gave her an explanation. It wasn’t perfect and it didn’t excuse any of it, not by far, but it was something. Especially coming from someone like him. Someone who didn’t say things he didn’t mean. 

She lays there in the dark, feeling herself fall apart. The lump in her throat is dissolving and her eyes are burning and even though he’s the one that bared his soul, she’s the one that feels naked. Vulnerable. Her resentment is no longer a hard shell, but a fragile glass case with a sign that says do not touch. She breathes in. Then out. Then in. Then out again. It’s a better alternative to crying. 

She is not going to cry in front of him.

But then under the duvet, his fingertips are brushing her back. “Sansa?”

God, she wishes she could have at least done it _quietly._

A soft choking noise leaves her throat, and she doesn’t swallow it fast enough. It’s out there, and so are her tears, running down her cheeks and what’s even worse is that she’s forced to sniffle to keep it from getting even worse. His hand is still on her back. 

It doesn’t leave.

She’s only vaguely aware of the bed shifting, before she feels herself fall back against something warm and firm, feels strong arms snake around her waist, feels his cheek scratchy against her shoulder. 

“Please don’t cry.” He sounds almost panicked. “I really am sorry.”

She almost yells at him to stop saying it because she doesn’t think she can take it another time, but she’s incapable of speech like this, so she just holds onto him, waiting for the tears to leave her. It slowly starts to sink in for her. Jon is holding her. He’s holding her because he cares about her. He has this entire time. 

But she’s still not sure she’s ready to let him in just yet. 

Sansa pulls away from him when her eyes are dry and more than a little dry. He lets her, But she doesn’t turn her back on him. She hopes she doesn't ever have to do that again.

“Truce, okay?” She whispers. “That doesn’t mean I forgive you, but it means I’ll try. Okay?”

He’s still close. So close, their shoulders are touching. She thinks his fingers brush hers, but its so fast, there and gone, that she thinks she imagined it. 

“Okay.” He says finally.


	4. Chapter 4

Sansa wakes up feeling warm.

No headache from crying herself to sleep, which is a relief. That was what she did, she can tell from the dryness of her throat. The longer she sits there, eyelids half shuttered, the more it all comes flooding back to her. She remembers where she is: back in Winterfell. At her parent’s house. In her own bed. In Jon’s arms.

In Jon’s arms.

That was where she had been when she fell asleep. She remembers that too, her fully knowing that she should move away but just being too tired to. And it felt so nice. It had been so long since she had been held like that, which is kind of pathetic, really—

Anyway. He’s not holding her now. They must have shifted in the middle of the night or something. He’s on his side, snoring, and her arms are wrapped around his middle and her cheek is against his shoulder. God, he had probably tried to get away from her and she followed him. That almost makes her pull away from him immediately, but then she remembers just how light of a sleeper he is and stays perfectly still. Her heart feels like it’s beating so loud enough to echo and she wonders if he can feel it.

  
There’s a soft, almost tentative knock at the door, and Sansa freezes even more, though she didn’t think it was possible. When, surprisingly enough, Jon’s snoring continues uninterrupted, she slowly but clumsily disentangles herself from him and hurries towards the door. She doesn’t want to risk another knock, and laying there and ignoring whoever was at the door would just be asking for one knowing her family. Sure enough, when she cracks open the door, she finds Robb standing there with his fist poised to knock again.

“It is 5 in the morning.” She says. Calmly. Very coolly. Trying to resist the urge to wring his neck.   
  
  
Robb seems perfectly oblivious to this, however. That, or he doesn’t really care. Both are very likely. “I was wondering if Jon was awake. Me and Dad are gonna go to the gym. Ask him if he wants to come.”

  
“I am not gonna ask him because he isn’t awake.” Sansa whispers furiously. “And I’m not waking him up, either. He needs to rest.”

She remembered what he had said yesterday—that he couldn’t sleep the night before, which most likely meant that he didn’t sleep. Which would explain why he’s currently dead to the world right now. The least she can do is let him stay that way for a little while. For his sake and everyone else’s. Cranky Jon is a thousand times worse than Normal Jon which is...definitely saying something. 

Robb looks thoroughly put out, but performs a mock salute after his long suffering sigh. “Yes, ma’am.”  
  


He’s walking away, and she’s about to shut the door when it occurs to her that pissing him off might not be the best idea. Especially when he could possibly be her solution. “Hey. Wait.”

Dutifully, Robb pauses, but not before sighing dramatically again.

Sansa bites her lip, closing the door to her room softly behind her. “Jeyne is really mad at me.”

  
“Yeah, no shit.” He says shortly, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “When do you plan on fixing that?”  
  


“I’m trying. But she won’t even stand in the same room as me.”

  
And it’s true. Every time she even tried to talk to Jeyne, she just walked away without acknowledging her presence at all. Not to mention the meals they had shared were even worse, because they were finally forced to be in the same room together, but anything Sansa tried to say to her was met with a snide remark.

It takes her a lot to say these next words, because she’s usually the one with the answers and the solutions, not the problems. But she swallows her pride, folding her arms across her chest, “What should I do?”

Robb shrugs. “Why are you asking me?”

“I’m desperate, obviously.” She snaps.

Robb cocks his head. “Then you should probably be a little nicer.”

Sansa glares at him, something like hopelessness curdling in her chest. She turns around to head back into her room, when Robb speaks again.

  
“There’s this one thing.”

  
She turns back to find him leaning against the wall, considering. His face is so uncharacteristically serious, it almost takes her aback.   
  


“You probably won’t wanna do it.”

“I’ll do anything.” Sansa says immediately. 

  
Robb shakes his head. “Not this.”

She’d be lying if she said that didn’t give her pause. She thought about just telling him to forget it, walking back into her room and leaving it at that, but that meant another breakfast with Jeyne ignoring her and another afternoon without laughing with her and another evening without sharing hot chocolate with too much whipped cream and talking about the crazy dreams they had and the TV shows they wanted to watch and everything and nothing at all. 

“Try me.” She says, before she can change her mind.

Robb squares his shoulders. “I was gonna go to Starfall and order the cake.” 

Her chest suddenly feels like it’s been caved in clean. For a moment, she forgets how to breathe. How to speak. It’s dread filling her lungs, not air.

“I thought you already ordered the cake.” 

“We ordered _a_ cake.”

“Why can’t we just have that cake?” She mumbles, albeit childishly. 

He levels her with a look. “Because only Starfall makes Jeyne’s favorite.”

She knows that. She was just hoping that he didn’t. She supposes she should be touched that Robb loves Jeyne enough to remember such an inane thing about her—because what is love if not remembering the birthday cake your fiancee had for six years straight as a child—but she can’t feel anything but dread. And guilt. Dread at the fact she has to do it, and guilt over the fact that she considered not doing it, and of course—

Over him. 

“Made.” Sansa finds it in herself to say, “They don’t make it anymore. They haven’t in years.”

Not since his aunt died. That was before they started dating, so she never asked why. It was possible that the recipe died with her. Or maybe her family just found it too painful to make. And if that is the case, she’d be just giving him another reason to hate her by demanding this of him. 

“If anyone could convince him to, it’s you.” Robb says, not unkindly. 

She hates that there’s some part of her that knows he’s right. That still hopes he’s right. 

“I didn’t think he’d still be here.” She whispers. She wants to cover her face with her hands, she’s so embarrassed. “I didn’t even think to ask.”

She had forgotten about him. Three years ago, in the midst of all the dread of coming home for the first time since Joffrey and the fear that her family wouldn’t wanna see her, she forgot about him. Or rather, she forced herself too.

“He’s here for the summer, at least.” Robb says. “Allyria just had the baby.” 

There was no love lost between her and Allyria. They’d gotten along great before, but that was before. Before she met Joffrey. Before she broke his heart. Before she ended up breaking her family’s too. Since then, Allyria’s attitude towards her was cool at best and thankfully, she had never encountered the worst. Part of her can’t help but be relieved that she’s bedridden so that she doesn’t have to face her ire, deserved as it may be. 

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” Robb says. “Dayne’s a decent guy. There’s a chance he might say yes anyway.”

He’s more than decent. At one point in her life, he was the best person she’d ever known. 

She could do this—she could tell Robb no and everything could still work out. But Jeyne would still be mad at her. And she’d still be avoiding him until she got the courage to approach him again. If she ever got the courage. 

“I’ll leave after breakfast.” She says finally, suddenly exhausted.

Robb whoops, then remembering it’s the crack of dawn, does a silent enthusiastic fist pump. He opens his mouth to say something else, but Sansa has no energy to continue the rest of this conversation. She shuts the door in his face without preamble, much to his protest. 

“Who was that?”

She can make out the outline of him in the dark, propped up on his forearms. She’s reminded how early it is. The sun is up, of course, as it never really goes down completely this time of year here, but if they were in New York, it would be just starting to rise. The clock reads 5:13 AM. She has a little bit longer before she has to swallow her pride. 

“Just Robb.” It’s an effort to make her voice sound even. “Go back to sleep.”

Jon doesn’t move. “Does he wanna go run?”

Her knees feel so weak. Every step she takes toward the bed is wooden and feels wrong. She sits because she doesn’t think she can stand anymore, and eventually remembers that he asked her a question.

“Don’t worry about what he wants.” She forces out. “He’s fine. You’re not. I know you haven’t slept since we’ve got here. Go back to bed.”

He doesn’t move. Somehow she knows he’s staring at her. “You’re not either.”

“What?”

“Fine.” His voice is still rough with sleep. “You’re not fine.”

He can’t see her. A rational part of her knows that he can’t. But he still _knows_ , somehow. It unsettles her. She feels overexposed, yet she doesn’t move. Not one muscle. 

“What’s wrong?” 

She doesn’t want to do this; crumble into him again. Once was bad enough. She’s still angry at herself for it. And a part of her is angry with him, too. 

“Fine. Go run.” Sansa swallows around the lump in her throat and turns on her side. “If that’s what you wanna do. I won’t stop you.”

She lays back down, pulling the duvet over herself, up to her chin. She wishes she was small. Small enough to disappear inside of them. 

  
Jon doesn’t move. She wishes he would. He does, but not the way she wants to. Instead, he lays back down. Then he’s still for so long, she would have thought he was asleep again. But he isn’t snoring, and his breathing isn’t shallow either. She knows that if she can hear him not sleeping, then he can definitely hear her. She hates him for it, too.

Sansa isn’t sure how much time has passed, when she feels his hand ghost the small of her back. She thinks of her back curved into his front last night as she cried. When he held her. She wonders if he’ll do it again. She knows that if he does, she’ll cry again. Despite her thoughts from minutes earlier, she wonders if that would be so bad. 

Jon stays right where he is. But his hand, it flattens against her back, circling the middle. Once. And then again. And again. His fingers curl, drawing lightly down her skin through the skin of her shirt. Soothingly. His palm is heavy and warm. she shivers all over, as if she hadn’t realized just how cold she was until he touched her. It causes him to falter.

“Don’t—” She closes her eyes because they feel so hot, and she’s waiting for the tears to recede. “Keep going. Please.

He does. That’s how she falls asleep again.

* * *

He’s gone when she wakes up again. 

Sansa doesn’t see it as much as she feels it, the absence of him in the dark. She fumbles for the remote on the nightstand to open the shutters. The sunlight comes streaming in full force. Just as she knew it was, the other side of the bed is empty. The covers are pulled up to her chin, but she still feels cold all over. She kicks them off, hoping the chill will wake her up some. 

It takes a moment for the dread she had gone to sleep with to come back, settling into her chest once again. Her conversation with Robb is fresh in her head as if it had just happened seconds ago, and so is what came after—

Whatever that was. 

Sansa tries not to think about it. She doesn’t have time to. The time on her phone reads a quarter past 10. She’d slept in later than she planned to. It’d take her an hour and a half to get to Long Lake and that was being generous. She focuses on the drive ahead rather than the reason for it, though it doesn’t make anything easier. She has to get dressed. She has to do her makeup. She has to pull up directions. She has to get gas. She has a hundred things to do and she can’t bring herself to move to even make an attempt at any of them.

There’s a knock on the door and she realizes she doesn’t have a choice. She stifles a yawn. “Come in.”

Sansa is expecting her parents—the only two people in the house polite enough to knock during the day. Her siblings, and her included, honestly, considered privacy an illusion between the five of them, so she isn’t expecting any of them. She isn’t expecting Jon, either.

She didn’t even know he knew how to knock.

But it’s him. He closes the door behind him, saying, “You’re awake.”

Sansa pulls the covers back over the lower half of her body as slow as she can get away with. She doesn’t want to seem like she cares about his perception of her body, but she does, unfortunately. Not that she would ever admit it to him. She struggles to sit up against the headboard. “You should have woken me. I don’t sleep this late.”

He shrugs at that. “You let me sleep in.”

She wants to correct him, to tell him that the term sleeping in would imply he got adequate sleep in the first place, but she notices the tray full of food in his hand. “What’s that?”

“Breakfast. You missed it.” He hands the tray over to her. “Here.”

Eggs. Toast. Sausage. All still warm, judging from the steam wafting from the plate. There’s orange juice, and a side of blueberry jam. Sansa raises her brows, taking it. “They actually saved something for me?”

“Not exactly.” Jon admits. “Your mom tried. The plate lasted an hour before Rickon and Arya split it between them. There were still eggs in the fridge and sausage in the freezer so I just—remade what I could.” 

Remade. 

Sansa looks down at the tray. It all _looks_ good. She cuts both sausages in half. No pink in the middle. Tentatively, she picks up a fork and spears a tiny piece of egg and tastes it. 

He made her breakfast. 

And it’s edible. 

“You can cook.” She says, almost accusingly.

Jon gives her that look, the one that often times makes her feel stupid because he’s looking at her like he thinks she might be. She’s too utterly perplexed to contemplate smacking it off his face. 

“I’m 36. Why wouldn’t I be able to cook?”

“I don’t know, maybe because I’ve been making all of your meals for the past three years?”

He blinks, sitting down on the window seat. “I paid you, didn’t I?”

Okay, _now_ she wants to smack him. 

“That’s not the point.” Sansa says. “The way you were acting when you came over to my apartment the other night had me thinking you were incapable of surviving without me or something, or something.” 

“Not that incapable.” He observes. “You didn’t come back.”

She considers telling him just how much strength that had taken on her part. She considers telling him about her realization, that she might have stayed with him for years and years if she hadn’t heard that conversation between him and Tyrion. She considers telling him that how he treated her might have been why she left but that last reason is why she stayed gone. 

“Good thing I didn’t.” She says instead. “You’re not as helpless as I thought.” 

Jon rolls his eyes at that. “Just because I’ve lived without you before, doesn’t mean I wanted to.”

Every clever retort she has dies on her lips.

Her throat is suddenly dry. She sips at her orange juice for moisture, and to give her something to do as she looks for something to say. Anything to say so she doesn’t seem affected by him.

“Thank you.” She says at last. “For making me breakfast—thank you.” 

“Don’t thank me.” He says. “You’ve done it for me.”

Sansa starts eating so she doesn’t have to say anything else.

She expects him to leave, but he doesn’t. He just watches her. She knows it’s because of last night and this morning. She also knows he won’t ask about it, because it isn’t his way. But he will watch her. She cannot tell if it’s because he’s worried for her or he’s trying to figure her out. After last night, after what he said, the answer should be clear. But she’s just not sure. She never is with him.

“Robb mentioned you were going somewhere today.” Jon says, once she’s finished the last of her sausage. “I was wondering if you’d mind if I tagged along.”

“Why?” She blurts.

For a second, she thinks Robb told him about Edric, but knows as soon as it crosses her mind it isn’t true. He would have confronted her about it rather than asked her. It could be about last night...that he’s...not exactly sure about letting her go off on her own. But if that is true, she wants to hear him say it. She needs to, in order to believe it.

He actually looks uncomfortable. Sansa doesn’t miss the way he shifts in his seat a little. When he answers, she understands why. “Your dad wants to go golfing.”

Only once had her dad liked any of her boyfriends enough to invite them to golf. Even Edric hadn’t made it to golf, and he was her father’s second favorite. Of course, none of them were Jon Snow, and none of them were her husband.

“You’re not bad at golfing.” Sansa says, finally.

His eyes narrow at that. “I’m great at golfing.”

She bypasses the blueberry jelly—too bitter for her taste—in favor of scooping eggs onto her toast. “That’s pushing it.”

Jon looks like he wants to argue with that, and quite badly, but he shakes his head. “Not the point. Can I come with you or not?”

“I thought you got along with my dad okay.” 

She’s playing for time at this point. She knows full well that taking Jon to Long Lake is a horrible idea, considering how he reacted to Willas. But a part of her is still considering it, all because she doesn’t want to go alone. 

  
She’s aware of how pathetic that is. 

  
“Yeah. For now.” He says. “I think the whole golfing thing is an ambush.”

She thinks of how Gendry had come back from golfing, whitefaced and slightly trembling, and she thinks he might have a point. And unlike Gendry, Jon actually has something to hide. They both do.

“Fine.” She says. She could leave him in the car when they got to Starfall, anyway. With his dislike for human interaction, he would probably be more than happy to. 

He breathes what she thinks might be a minute sigh of relief. “Where are we going, anyway?”

She takes her time chewing before she answers. “Long Lake.”

“Isn’t that like two hours away?”

“At least you won’t have time to golf when we get back.”

Jon sighs, but he doesn’t complain. He just scrubs at his face. She notices he’s wearing his wedding ring. She wonders when he put it back on again. Had it been last night, before their truce? Or this morning, when he comforted her and made her breakfast later on?

  
Sansa sets her plate aside, food unfinished. She decides that she doesn’t want to know. 

  
“I’m gonna start getting ready.” She tells him. 

“You haven’t finished your food.” He frowns. 

  
She doesn’t bother replying, shutting herself in the bathroom. 

* * *

They leave the house an hour later. The drive is quiet, at first. They argue only once, about the sound the car makes when she turns the ignition. Jon claims there’s a slight ticking sound and Sansa, a little too defensive of her car, tells him if he wanted an excuse to take his shirt off and get all manly then he should have just said so. He doesn’t say anything else for a while. Not until they leave town and they begin their trip in earnest, nearing Frostfangs.

That’s when Jon decides he’s an expert on directions. 

It’s not until he starts correcting her on where she’s going that remembers that he actually used to live here. The game that her father and brother went to go see him play in was in Long Lake, after all. She knows he’s been at least once, but he navigates the roads as if it was just yesterday. She always knew he had a good memory, but it appeared that was a sore understatement. Maybe that’s why he knows as much about her as he does. Of course, that would imply he’d been paying attention this whole time.

She doesn’t know what to do with that information. 

“You’d probably be able to hear the directions from the GPS if you weren’t listening to music so loudly.” Jon mutters.

“The GPS talks over the music.” She tells him, for the thousandth time that hour. 

“Then why did you miss the last two turns?”

“You know what, if you’re gonna backseat drive, then why don't you give it a shot?” She explodes. 

Jon simply holds his hands out for the keys.

Sansa pulls over and practically throws them at him, slamming the car door. He catches them easily, looking annoyingly unbothered. When she gets back in the car, she angles her body toward the window to make it clear she wants nothing to do with him.

“ _One direction?_ We’ve been missing turns for the sake of One direction?”

She whips her head back around to find him squinting at her phone with mounting annoyance. She snatches it back. 

“We’re listening to my roadtrip playlist that happens to have one direction on it.” Her cheeks feel hot. 

“An hour and a half hardly qualifies as a road trip.” Then he snatches her phone back. “We need something decent to listen to. 

“You literally just whined about me listening to music.”

“I don’t need directions. I know where I’m going.”

Sansa snatches her phone back _again._ “My car, my rules, my music.”

“Well do you happen to have any _music_ that doesn’t make me wanna blow my brains out?” He says music like he’s using invisible quotation marks. God, she hates him for it.

“Really?” She scoffs. “Because I saw you nodding your head to steal my girl just five minutes ago.”

And he almost looks horrified. “I was _not._ ”

“Were too.”

“Was _not._ ”

“I’ll play it again.” She smiles, simpering sweet. “Just to refresh your memory.” 

Before she can even find the song, Jon says, “Give me that.” And he has her phone in his hand again. This time, he angles his body away from her so she can’t take it back, thanks to a hard wall of ridiculously broad shoulders. She reaches over the console, but he fends her off easily. 

  
“Give it back!”

She can’t see his face, but she just _knows_ he’s smirking. Or at least something close to that. Anything more might require a soul.

“What’s Marina and the Diamonds?” He actually sounds curious. 

“I’ll bite you.” She threatens, not sure if she means it.

“You’re like a little monkey.” He makes a sound she isn’t quite sure is a laugh. “Here. Take it.”

He hands her the phone, but not before music starts playing through the speakers. She snatches it back. “What the hell is this?”

“Actual music.”

Sansa bristles at that. “Just because One direction makes music for girls doesn’t mean it isn’t music—

“Made.” Jon interjects. 

She glares at him.

He must feels it, because when he pulls away from the side of the road he gives her a look that’s a little too innocent. “What? They aren’t together anymore.”

“They’re taking a _break—_ “

“Well, excuse me.” He mutters under his breath. 

She vows not to talk to him for the rest of the drive. She will _not_ give him the satisfaction. But staying quiet feels like she’s giving it to him anyway, and that pisses her off. “This is the worst song I’ve ever heard.” She says instead.

Jon gives her a sidelong glance of incredulity. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not, actually.” And the second look he gives her, like she’s grown three heads only encourages her even further. “Nobody listens to the yellow banana peppers anymore anyway—”

“The _Red hot chilli peppers?”_

She snorts. “I’m literally not saying that.”

“Oh, and the name _One Direction_ is so much better?”

“At least it means something.”

Jon opens his mouth and closes it, shaking his head. “You’re unbelievable. I can’t even believe I’m actually hearing this right now.”

If she didn’t know better, she would have looked out the window to check if pigs started flying. Jon Snow just admitted that she got under his skin. And she didn’t even have to pull it from him. _Stark versus Snow, 1-0._

It’s all she can do to keep from laughing. “I didn’t realize you were such a big fan.”

“I’m not.”

“Well the way you’re acting, it seems like they’re your One Direction.”

“No, actually, because unlike you, I like things _normally_.”

Sansa scowls.

_Stark versus Snow, 1-1._

She picks her phone back up. “Just for that, we’re gonna listen to the yearbook edition of Take Me Home.”

* * *

They don’t listen to the yearbook edition of Take Me Home.

Well, not the whole thing. They make it about three songs in before Jon starts complaining about how it makes him want to swerve off the road. Considering the fact she hadn’t expected him to make it past the first song let alone three, she allows him the use of the aux—but for three songs only. 

Because he’s driving and he refuses to hold his phone while driving, Sansa is forced to navigate his music library. He has no playlists, which strikes her as a potential sign of sociopathy. She has no choice but to press shuffle on it all. Almost immediately, Green Day starts playing and she feigns a gag. 

“You’re actually ridiculous.” Jon tells her. “You know, Greenday was considered a boyband at one point too—”

“Sure grandpa, let’s get you to bed.” Sansa mutters under her breath. “There has to be something listenable in here.”

“Get me home made me wish I was deaf.” He retorts. 

“It’s called _Take Me Home—”_

“What? I can’t hear you. My ears are still bleeding. I’m actually suffering brain damage.”

“That’s been there since I met you.”   
  


He rolls his eyes at that so hard she knows it must hurt. _Stark versus Snow, 2-1._ Extremely pleased with herself, Sansa continues to scroll through his library. An all too familiar song catches her eye. She almost bursts into laughter, but weakly stifles it with a cough.

Jon whips his head in her direction, suspicious. “What’s so funny?” 

In response, she presses play, turning up the volume all the way. Steven Tyler starts crooning through the speakers. Almost immediately, Jon turns it down, looking unamused. 

“If you sing every word of this song, I won’t play another one direction song for the rest of this trip.” She tries her best to keep a straight face, holding up her pinky. “I swear.”   
  


He doesn’t take it. “No.” 

“Why not?” She teases, unable to supress her giggles. “This is real music isn’t it? Big _manly_ _man_ music?”

“I’m not singing it.” 

“Come on! I’ll sing it with you!”

“How do you know this song?” 

“How do _you_ know this song?”

“I asked you first.” Jon says stubbornly. 

Sansa ignores that, turning the music back up and singing, “ _That kind of lovin…”_

“I’m not doing it.” He says loudly, so she can hear him over the music. He reaches over to turn the music down, and she stops him, singing even louder. 

_“Turns a man into a slave!”_

“Jesus Christ, the windows are down.” The back of his neck and the tips of his ears are flushed as he struggles to roll the windows back up. They’re at a red light, and there are cars around them.

_“That kind of lovin…”_ She sings even louder, now that the windows are up. 

Jon shakes his head, eyes closing briefly like he wants to very much be anywhere else but here as she continues to sing. 

_“I go crazy! Crazy!_ Come on, just one little line!” Sansa puts her fist in his face like it’s a microphone he can sing into. “I’ll leave you alone if you do!”

Jon rolls his eyes, but at the promise of peace, he says, so quietly she can barely hear him, _“You turn it on….”_

“Louder!”

“Don’t piss me off.”

Unable to take it anymore, she dissolves into laughter. Belly aching, bent over at the waist laughter. The kind of laughter that almost has her choking. She has to wipe at her eyes to keep herself from crying. Her throat is hoarse, but she can’t make herself stop. She looks over at him, expecting to find him just as sullen and irritated, only to find that—

He isn’t, really. 

He’s looking at her. And she’s never seen him look at her like this before—or anyone else. It’s his mouth. It’s curved upwards, like he’s trying his best not to smile, but he can’t help it.

She doesn’t think she’s ever made him smile before.

Then his eyes are back on the road and it’s gone, but she catches his mouth moving to the music again, _“I feel like the color blue….”_

* * *

The rest of the drive isn’t so bad.

Surprisingly enough. 

They come up with a system for music, alternating every song. His taste isn’t bad—though she’d never tell him so—it’s just dated and stuck in the 90s and the 2000s. She privately admits to liking two Weezer songs and she gets him to admit that he can _tolerate_ Steal My Girl.

They still bicker, but they only really argue once, and that’s over the meaning of Rock Me. He told her it was about sex and she insisted it wasn’t, only for him to counter with, “What exactly did you think they were rocking?”

She doesn’t speak to him for a solid 10 minutes while he tries his best not to laugh himself hoarse. But she’s more in awe of the fact that she made him laugh and smile in one day than she’s angry at him. 

“I never asked you what we were doing here.” Jon says. They’ve made it to Long Lake in one piece. She had somehow managed to forget why they were driving up here in the first place. Until now. 

“Just bachelorette party stuff.” Sansa answers, attempting to sound dismissive. It’s not necessarily a lie. There were things she could get here and would get, it’s just not the only reason she’s here. 

“We couldn’t have done that in Winterfell?”

“You’ve obviously never been shopping in Winterfell.”

That’s true, too. Shopping in Winterfell js good for only three things: snow gear, fishing gear, and hockey gear. If you want anything remotely stylish, you have to go to the outlet mall downtown, and calling that a mall is generous. 

“Well—where do you wanna go first?”

That’s a good question.

She’d save Starfall for very last. Right now, she should focus on the party. She’s been lagging on it admittedly, with Jon keeping her so busy, but now she has no excuse. She needs to buckle down and plan the greatest bachelorette party in the history of bachelorette parties. If the cake doesn’t work out, surely that would get Jeyne to forgive her. 

“Let’s start at the mall.” She declares.

So that’s what they do.

Long Lake’s mall isn’t just a collection of a few clothing stores and some restaurants. It’s two stories, with so many stores that there’s a big map directory. There’s a food court. There’s a movie theater. There’s a Nordstrom. There’s even a Party City, which is a store that’s recommended in nearly all the bachelorette articles she has bookmarked. So that’s where they go first. 

Unfortunately, it’s a total bust. All the decorations are cheesy and not in a good way, and it’s not like she’s exactly looking for decorations anyway. They wouldn’t be staying in one place all night. Granted, she hasn’t figured out where they’re gonna go yet, but still. There are sashes and buttons, but Jeyne’s mother already said she was handling all of that. So Sansa settles for grabbing eight boa’s of different colors, all for each member of the bachelorette party, a plastic tiara for Jeyne, and some beads. 

“Those are gonna be a mess,” Jon says on their way to check out, looking at the boas distastefully.

“Sometimes fun is messy.” She says. “You do know what that is? _Fun?”_

“Yeah, because you look like you’re having a blast right now.” He mutters dryly. 

He’s right. Party City had been her only idea, and she hadn’t even gotten anything good out of it. She tries not to get too down. She can’t give up now. That would mean giving up on Jeyne, and even if she is mad at her, she’s still counting on her. 

There’s a liquor store towards the entrance of the mall, and she buys little tiny bottles of alcohol, the kind they carry in hotels. At Target, she gets pink yard cups in the shape of palm trees and some glow sticks she finds in the kid’s toy section. That gives her an idea. They go back to Party City—much to Jon’s annoyance—and she picks up some tacky wigs from the costume section, and push up confetti pops shaped like champagne glasses. She finally feels like she’s accomplished _something._

“You want me to carry this all the way back to the car by myself?” Jon asks, disbelieving after they leave the store. They have about 8 bags in total. He’s got most of them. 

“There’s still shopping to be done. I don’t wanna waste any time.” Sansa hands the two bags she’s carrying off to him. “You can take them to the car and when you’re done, just call me and I’ll tell you where I am. Sound good?”

He opens his mouth, and because she knows it’s probably another complaint, she chirps, “Great!” And leaves before he can say anything else.

Sansa takes her exploring to the second floor by route of the escalator. Even before she steps off, a store catches her eye. It kind of reminds her of hot topic, with its black tile floors and lack of windows. But she saw hot topic downstairs. And Hot Topic didn’t have a mannequin dressed in lingerie and another male mannequin wearing nothing but leather underwear and a dog collar. That makes her curious. Unfortunately. 

  
Upon walking into the store, the first thing she sees is a huge dick. 

  
It’s purple. It kind of looks like an octopus tentacle. She has to blink a couple times to make sure she’s not imagining it, but there it is. Sitting on a display stand like it’s something respectable and not the most awful thing she’s ever seen. 

“Interested?”

Sansa turns around to find what she assumes is an employee standing behind her, smiling genially. Like the mannequin in the window, she’s wearing a bustier. Unlike the mannequin though, her boobs are huge. She tries her best not to stare, but finds it really hard, and forgets what the woman said in the first place.

“It’s a part of our monster collection. It’s all the rage right now. ” She continues, sounding almost concernedly proud. “We have smaller sizes, of course. And bigger.”

Sansa’s eyes widen. “You have bigger than this

The woman—Ros, according to the name tag on the cleavage she is trying her best not to look out, only grins. “I could show you, if you’d like.” 

“Oh, no.” She says, maybe too fast, cheeks feeling hot. “No thank you. I was just—I was looking. In general, I mean. I was just outside and I thought I’d just...look.”

“Was it the mannequin that brought you in?” When Sansa begins to stammer once more, her smile turns smug. “See, I knew that would bring more women in. So far, we’ve only had guy customers. But ever since we put that mannequin up, they stay away. Sends a message, you know?”

Unsure of what else to say, Sansa just nods, forcing enthusiasm. 

Ros switches gears fast. “So, you’re into bondage?” She asks, like normal people would ask about the weather.

“No! _No._ I don’t—no. I don’t do that stuff.” Sansa shakes her head vigorously. “I didn’t even come here on purpose, or anything. I was just shopping for my best friend’s bachelorette party and I saw—”

“A bachelorette party?” Ros perks up at that. “You came to just the right place! We have all sorts of stuff for bachelorette parties.”

She’s about to tell her for the third time that she did _not_ come here on purpose, when Ros links their arms together like they’ve been friends for years, and starts leading her further into the store. 

“Usually, if you want something raunchy for a bachelorette party, you have to order online for the sake of propriety.” She prattles, “But that takes _forever._ We don’t have 5-7 business days, we have one night. That’s what bachelorette parties are about, you know? One last good night. And at Fleabottom, we wanna make sure that last night counts.”

If the first thing Sansa had seen in this store wasn’t a huge purple monster dick, then she’d be thoroughly convinced of Ros as a saleswoman. But it isn’t like she can afford to be skeptical. It’s possible this place has something that the others don’t, something that could help her throw Jeyne the best bachelorette party ever. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

So yeah. She follows her. 

There’s an entire aisle dedicated to bachelorette party memorabilia, which admittedly is filled with a lot more dick shaped things than she cares to see. There’s also a lingerie section reserved for so called “Wedding Night Shenanigans.” That’s what catches her eye. If there’s one thing Jeyne loved, it was lingerie. And since they were the same size, it was easy to shop for her. 

Jon calls her not long after Ros leaves her to her own devices, and Sansa tells him where she is. After hanging up the phone, it occurs to her that he might not be very comfortable in this store, so she grabs the hot pink nightie set, making sure it’s her size, and makes one last stop at the bachelorette aisle before check out. She inspects a scratch a dare lotto card, and decides to grab three, just to try them out. She’s inspecting the penis shaped yard straws with interest when she feels a hand wrap around her elbow. 

“Don’t _touch_ those.” Jon whispers furiously.   
  
  


If she wasn’t so embarrassed herself, then she’d probably laugh at the look on his face right now, the clench of his jaw and the way a flush is creeping steadily up his neck. But she is so she decides to take pity on him.

“I wasn’t touching them. I was just looking at them.” 

  
“Don’t do that either! What if someone saw you?”

10 minutes here has must have numbed her own mortification somewhat, because she almost laughs. Almost. Until she thinks about how her mother would react if she found out she was in a store like this. Then she leads them both to check out. 

  
Rather than Ros, a dark haired worker named Shae is manning the register. Thankfully, her boobs aren’t threatening to spill out of her bustier. Sansa is glad that Ros is wherever she is, so she doesn’t have to watch Jon try not to look at her boobs. He doesn't seem interested in Shae. But to be fair, he doesn’t seem remotely interested in anything this place has to offer. 

“We have changing rooms if you wanna try this on.” Shae says, gesturing to the lingerie set she got for Jeyne. “The biggest one is free.” 

It takes Sansa a minute to get what she’s saying, even with the suggestive arch of her eyebrow. Jon is quicker on the uptake than her. “No.” He mutters. “Just ring her up.”

Shae shrugs, and bags the lingerie, and swipes the scratch offs next. She picks up the final item, a box, and to Sansa’s absolute mortification, gives an understanding, “ _Ohhhhh_.”

It doesn’t help that the box is on it’s right side, so anyone in the line behind them would have been able to tell that it’s a mini vibrator. No one in the line is behind them though, it’s just her and Jon, whose face she doesn’t dare look at right now. Her own feels like all the blood has rushed to it at once. 

“You know, we actually have a sale on our libido boosters currently.” Shae says, almost sympathetically. “Everything is buy one get free—”

“Excuse _me_?” Jon bites out. 

“We’re good, actually. We’ll just—have our total.” Sansa clears her throat. “Thank you.”

Shae simply raises her eyebrows, but aquiesces them. Sansa pays. The receipt doesn’t even get a chance to print before Jon leaves. She would have gone after him immediately, but something catches her eye.

“Hey, what’s that flyer say?” Sansa asks. 

Shae looks behind her, then she smirks knowingly. “Ladies night on thursday at Club Blackwater. It’s so fun. Actually—if you show up with your receipt, you get a discount. Are you interested?”

And this time, Sansa says. “Yeah. I think I am.”

* * *

  
She practically skips back to the car, where Jon is waiting. She wants to tell him everything about Club Blackwater, and how awesome Jeyne’s bachelorette party tells her he’s still mad about what happened.   
  


“It wasn’t for me, you know. That...thing.” She can’t bring herself to say the word out loud; Fleabottom hadn’t taken all her propriety. Even mentioning it makes her face feel hot. “It’s for Jeyne. It’s a gag gift. That’s why it’s so small.”  
  


“Maybe you should have told _her_ that.” His jaw works. “She thinks I can’t satisfy my own wife.”

  
“She didn’t say that, _exactly_ —” 

“Do you know what libido boosters _are?”_

“Of course I do, I’m not stupid.” She scoffs. “I just don’t see why it matters what she thinks. It’s not like we’re gonna see her again. And it’s not like she knew what she was talking about, anyway. We don’t even do...that stuff.”

_That stuff._ God, what is she? Twelve?

Jon doesn’t say anything. 

“You know, I think one day we’re both gonna look back on this, and we’re gonna laugh.”

Truth be told, she’s on the verge of busting out right now, but something tells her that wouldn’t be well received at the moment. She knows that’s true when he sneers.

“Don’t be mad at me.” She nudges him. He can’t be mad at her. Not when they’ve gotten so much accomplished. “Let’s go get ice cream. My treat.”

“I don’t like ice cream.” He grumbles.

“Did I say ice cream? I mean gelato.”

Jon pauses. “They have a gelato place here?”

For the first time, she thinks there might be perks to knowing him as well as she does. “I thought you knew your way around town.” She teases. 

He doesn’t say anything, but he does seem at least 10% less prickly. Finally, he says, “Tell me where to go.”

* * *

Starfall is just how she remembers it. 

Frilly, yet quaint. The sign above is still the same lilac, with the signature shooting star underneath. The prettiest cakes she’s ever seen stil sit in the window, proudly on display. She knows that if she opens the door, he’ll still be there too. It’s why she pauses. 

The success with the bachelorette party planning had left her feeling on top of the world, but now she feels like she did this morning all over again. Weak and tired. Ashamed of herself. But this isn’t about her pride. It’s about Jeyne. It’s _for_ Jeyne.   
  


Who she knows would do the same for her. 

“I shouldn’t take long,” Sansa clears her throat, before forcing herself to open the car door. “Stay here. I’ll be back.”

Just as she knew he would, Jon has no complaints about staying behind. But he does tell her, “Make it quick. It looks like it’s gonna rain soon, and we still have to get back.”

And she has no choice but to rip the bandaid off. 

It’s already misting when she closes the door of the lexus behind her. She wastes no time doing the same with the bakery. She had hoped she could slip in, like a ghost, like she had never left, but that same bell still hangs above the door and tinkles, announcing her arrival. 

He’s rummaging through the cabinets, looking for something. From the back, he looks exactly the same. White sweater. Wiry, lean limbs. Shaggy blonde hair.

“I’ll be with you in just a second.” Edric says it soft, like he says everything else. He’s always been gentle, not just with her, but with everyone. 

“Take your time.” She says quietly, and hates how hoarse her voice sounds. 

She hates that he still recognizes it.

He stills before turning back. Those deep amethyst eyes meet hers for just a single moment, before he closes the cabinet and turns around to look at her. To really look at her. 

“You’re back.” He says.

“So are you.” She says weakly.

Edric undoes his apron, rounding the counter. “I heard congratulations are in order.”

She catches him looking at her naked ring finger. The one she purposely kept bare because she wasn’t sure going to see him for the first time in years with a favor in one hand and a ring on the other was such a good idea. 

“For you too.” Sansa tries for a smile. “I heard you have a cousin.”

He smiles back. “A girl. Ash.”

After his aunt. Her heart aches for him. “I’m happy for you. You always wanted more family.”

“You always wanted less.”

They both laugh. A genuine, long laugh like the ones they used to share together. It makes her feel warm inside. The fact that they can still do this makes her want to cry. He’s always been too good for everyone. Even her.

“Don’t get all sentimental on me.” Edric says, and she knows he must see it all over her face. The guilt. The dread.

“Me? Sentimental?” Sansa can’t help but laugh. “You kept the ticket stubs from our first date.”

He blushes a little at that, and shrugs helplessly. “It was a good movie.”

“It was.” She agrees. 

They both move at the same time.

Finding her way into his arms is as easy as it’s always been. He still smells like sea salt and freshly mowed grass. He still feels warm. He still feels familiar. 

“I really missed you, Ned.” She whispers into his shoulder, eyes burning. “And I’m so—”

“What’d I just say about the past, hm?” He whispers. “Stop getting sentimental. I mean it, Sparkles. You didn’t do anything wrong, anyway. Okay?”

But it didn’t feel like that. Not at that the time, and not now. Still, she listens to him, nodding. And she holds him tighter. 

“I hope you didn’t just come down here to apologize.” Edric says, pulling back slightly. 

“Well, I did,” She admits sheepishly. “But I also need a cake.” 

“Now we’re talking.” He smiles. “That’s my specialty. Birthday? Anniversary?”

“Wedding.”

He nods. “Robb and Jeyne, right?”

“Right.” She hedges. 

And he’s got her number. Edric sighs, withdrawing fully to cross his arms over his chest. “You’re here about the raspberry white chocolate.”

“Yes—”

“You know we don’t sell that anymore.”

“I know. I know.” She says. “But I’m willing to pay you. A lot.”

He shakes his head. “Sansa—”

“It’s Jeyne’s wedding, Ned. You know Jeyne.”

He grimaces at that. Jeyne had never really been that nice to him. Sansa tries another route. 

“You know Robb. You love Robb. So do I. I love both of them, and I just want them to be happy.” She hears her pleading start to creep towards desperation, but she can’t stop herself. “And Jeyne is super mad at me right now so—I’m just trying to make it up to her. Which isn’t your problem, I know, and you’re the last person I should be coming to for favors….If you won’t, I understand. But if you do, I’ll be so grateful. So, so grateful.”

Edric stares at her for a long time, and she sees it all over his face. The hurt she caused him in the past. The hurt she’s causing him right now, asking him such a thing. She wishes she wasn’t. She swears she’ll make it up to him, because she knows exactly what he’s about to say. 

“You know I can’t say no to you.” He says at last. 

Robb sent her a picture of the original cake, and she uses that to relay to Edric all the new details that should be on the new one. He sketches it, and any other details he needs filling in, she texts Robb and he tells her.

“Thank you.” She says, probably from the umpteenth time. But this time, she hugs him again. Tighter. 

“Don’t thank me until you taste it.” Edric sighs, but he smiles. “No one’s made it since my aunt for a reason.”

“And I came to you for a reason.” She says back. “You never let me down.”

He blushes at that, and it strikes her once again, just how much she’s missed him. How could she have ever forgotten?

The bell above the door to the bakery rings again. This entire time they’ve been brainstorming, not one customer has come in. It’s not a customer now, either. Jon is standing in the doorway. 

Sansa pulls back from Edric, even though it’s too late. He notes that though, just like he notes everything, dark eyes moving over her. Then him. 

“It’s raining.” He says. 

His shirt is speckled with rain, and so is the top of his Yankees cap. Something is wrong, too. Wrong with him. And she has a feeling she knows what it is. 

“I can see that.” She has to force her voice to sound light. “Ned, this is my husband, Jon. Jon, this is N—Edric.”

“Yeah I heard.” Edric nods at him, smiling. “Pleasure to meet you, man. Big fan.”

No he wasn’t. Ned couldn’t care less about hockey. That was why she liked him so much. But he’s the kind of person who will tell little white lies for the sake of niceties. 

Jon isn’t. At least not when he doesn’t care to. 

“Can we go?” is all he says. 

Sansa turns back to Edric. “You have my number. And Robb’s for any questions. Call if you need us, okay?” 

“I will.” He frowns over shoulder, presumably at him. She doesn’t look at Jon. She doesn’t want to know what his reaction is. “Drive safe.”

It’s coming down harder outside than it was when she went inside. Solid, steady rain drops. She wastes no time getting into the car. Jon follows. 

She waits for it, his questions. His accusations. His annoyance. Just like how it happened with Willas. Five minutes pass. Then 10. Then 30. They never come. She almost wishes they would, because the silence is unbearable. She has a feeling that if she turned on music, he wouldn’t even argue with her about what songs to listen to. 

She thinks about last night. How he said he trusted her. This doesn’t feel like trust. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are hugely appreciated and help me update faster! Thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on my new tumblr @kingsansa!


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